A Difficult Future
by psychedout9
Summary: John, Ian, and Helen receive a mysterious set of books. The Alex Rider series.
1. Chapter 1

**Yay I'm back with a new fic! What can I say? I was inspired. Now I know there have been a couple of started attmepts at a 'reading the books' in this fandom but none seem to be finished. So I guess I'll start off by saying that I'll never abandon this story. It's not my style. I may not update for a while but what can you do? That's life. I do happen to have the next chapter almost done though so I should be able to put it up soon.**

**Disclaimer: New story, ah, and with that comes the stupid need to point out the fact that I DO NOT and will NEVER own Alex Rider. I know, you're all crying on the inside.**

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><p>Helen Rider was smiling. She was sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for the popcorn to finish popping.<p>

From her spot she had a clear view of John and Ian fighting for the TV remote.

She could picture them doing the same as children, so lost in the chase that the purpose, actually watching the television, became lost.

She placed her hand across her belly, wondering what her child, almost 8 months conceived, would be like.

**Ding!**

She grabbed the popcorn and walked into the living room, placing it on the small coffee table.

She effectively ended the boys' 'epic' battle by snatching the remote and pushing them to opposites ends of the couch, then plopping in between them.

"Since you boys obviously can't handle it I've decided we're watching what I want." She stated and then proceeded to put on a sappy romance movie.

They both groaned and began to voice complaints that she stifled with, "Too bad. You should have thought of that earlier."

So, with remote securely in one hand and popcorn bowl in the other, she leaned back against her husband's chest, studiously ignoring the silent argument he was having with Ian over her head.

An hour into the movie both Ian and John were fast asleep and the slow rise and fall of John's breathing was coaxing Helen into the same state.

Just as her eyes slid shut the doorbell rang, making them all start. After assessing that the noise was not a threat Ian let his head fall back onto the couch.

"John, go get the door." He mumbled, closing his eyes yet again. Helen looked at the clock, which showed the time to be exactly midnight.

"Who's coming this late?" She wondered aloud.

"I don't know." John said as he extracted himself from under her and walked tot the door, whacking the sleeping Ian over the head as he passed.

"Hey!" Came the half-hearted protest.

"Oh, go back to sleep." John replied as he opened the door.

No one.

Senses on edge, he scanned the area.

Nothing.

Looking down at the doorstep he found a stack of books with a single, folded sheet of paper on top.

Cautiously, he knelt next to it, searching for traps.

Finding none he hesitantly picked up the stack and carried it inside.

Helen was sitting up, rubbing her tired face, her wavy brown hair falling in a beautiful mess past her shoulders.

Ian appeared to be lost to dreams but when John set the books on the table with a heavy thump he quickly sat up.

"What are those?" Helen questioned, dark brown eyes alight with curiosity as she leaned forward.

John regained his spot next to her before opening the paper and reading aloud.

"_I thought you might find these interesting. Sadly, everything in these books is (or will be) true. Happy reading!_

_Sincerely your old (literally) friend,_

_S_

"Wait, so we're going to read these? Whose S?"

John glanced at Ian, hoping he'd come to the same conclusion, but found him staring at the cover of the book he'd obviously taken from the top of the pile.

"What is it?" John asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Ian ignored the question, instead turning to Helen. "What were you planning on naming the baby?" He asked, voice tight.

Helen was taken aback. "Um… Alexander, Alex for short. But you know that."

Ian's eyes widened.

"Is there something wrong with it?" Helen continued hesitantly, looking as if worried for Ian's sanity.

Wordlessly, he handed her the book clutched in his hand and pointed at the title.

Helen took it and when she gasped John leaned over her shoulder to read "**Alex Rider: Stormbreaker.**"

They continued to stare at it.

"I'm not going to try and pretend this is a coincidence." John said, reaching over and gently wresting it from Helen's tight grip.

Following a sort of instinct he flipped to the copyright page.

His hunch about the sender was obviously right as instead of the normal copyright information things like 'Smither's Inc.' riddled the page, along with a basic MI6 code that John quickly deciphered.

_P.S. This is not a joke, the publish date is the year these events occurred. No it is not a typo. And yes, I'm sure. Quite positive._

_S_

Apprehensive John looked at the date, and almost choked on his own saliva.

"2000!"

Ian and Helen both sent him bewildered looks.

"What's in this book happens in 2000, 14 years from now."

"Holy S**t!" Ian whispered.

Helen looked incredulous. "How is that possible?"

"Smithers." Was John's only reply, not clearing Helen's confusion but placing a look of comprehension on Ian's face.

"Wow, the next time he tells me that he's going to invent time travel I promise not to laugh at him." Ian said, still appearing stunned.

Helen was not convinced. "You believe this book is really from the future?"

John cleared his throat. "There's only one way to find out. I'll start reading."

Ian looked excited at the possibilities while Helen rolled her eyes but didn't say anything, sinking into the couch.

"Ok, chapter one. **Funeral Voices**."

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><p><strong>For now those three will be the only ones but I will add in more. Not sure who, Yassen, Ash, Smithers, etc? Maybe I'll do a poll later. Anyway, REVIEW!<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

**Wow, the response for this was AMAZING! Thanks guys! I'm a little nervous about this chapter, having never done a 'read the book' fic before so any comments and suggestions would be welcome.**

**Thanks for reviewing: Storage-Jar (yes, I'm a girl. So awkwardness averted:)),Fanfictionaddict1,Evgenia, TWINS PWN, Phantom Lightning,SilverStar121,Blissful Winter, ReillyScarecrowRocks,Pheonix Revenge,Books111,2whitie (I totally agree about Ash, I don't think I could put him in their without having someone beat him up),Sajna18,TheAwesomeJellyBean,AlexRider I am a flyer, Partypony2 (I'll try not to be one of those people),Mrs Frank Hardy,Banana Sultana (I actually have no clue how old they were when Alex was born... but that's pretty much their age),WrITinGthroughdarkness, and anonymous for reviewing! Also anyone who favorited/alerted :)**

** Disclaimer:If you think I actually own Alex Rider I'm sure I can find you a cozy spot in the nuthouse.  
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><p><strong>WHEN THE DOORBELL rings at three in the morning, it's never good news. <strong>

The three nodded in assent, worried looks appearing on their faces.

**Alex Rider was woken by the first chime. His eyes flickered open, but for a moment he stayed completely still in his bed, lying on his back with his head resting on the pillow. He heard a bedroom door open and a creak of wood as somebody went downstairs. The bell rang a second time and he looked at the alarm clock glowing beside him. There was a rattle as someone slid the security chain off the front door. He rolled out of bed and walked over to the open window, his bare feet pressing down the carpet pile. The moonlight spilled onto his chest and shoulders. Alex was fourteen, already well built, with the body of an athlete. His hair, cut short apart from two thick strands hanging over his forehead, was fair. His eyes were brown and serious.**

Helen smiled, "I bet he looks just like you, John."

John smiled back, until Ian budded in.

"Poor kid."

Causing him to glare.

**For a moment he stood silently half hidden in the shadow looking out. There was a police car parked outside. **

Concerned looks reappeared on their faces. "What do you think happened?" Helen asked.

Neither, John or Ian answered, knowing all too well.

**From his second floor window Alex could see the black ID number on the roof and the caps of the two men who were standing in front of the door. The porch light went on and at the same time the door opened**

"**Mrs. Rider?"**

"**No I'm the housekeeper. What is it? What's happened?"**

"**This is the home of Mr. Ian Rider?"**

At this Helen spoke yet again. "Wait, why is he at your house Ian?"

"I don't know. Maybe he's visiting." But an uneasy feeling gnawed at his stomach.

**"Yes."**

"**I wonder if we could come in… "**

**And Alex already knew. He knew from the way the police stood there awkward and unhappy. But**

**he also knew from the tone of their voices. Funeral voices…that was how he would describe them**

**later. The sort of voices people use when they come to tell you that someone close to you has died.**

Helen clapped a hand to her mouth, tears forming in her eyes. John's face whitened. In their line of work early death was a sure possibility, but it was different to really know when your little brother is going to die…

**He went to his door and opened it. He could hear the two policemen talking down in the hall but**

**only some of the words reached him.**

" …**a car accident… called the ambulance… intensive care… nothing anyone could do… so**

**sorry."**

Helen refused to let her tears fall, as the moisture gathered in her eyes. She leaned against John whose grip on the book was tight enough to rip it. They both looked at Ian who shrugged, trying to look unconcerned, but the fear in his eyes showed otherwise. He was afraid to leave his family to go into some unknown, as a spy knowing was what he did, finding out was his job, but it was also a part of him. It was also something that would be ripped away.

**It was only hours later, sitting in the kitchen, watching as the gray light of morning bled slowly**

**through the West London streets, that Alex could try to make sense of what had happened. His**

**uncle-Ian Rider-was dead. Driving home his car had been hit by a truck at Old Street roundabout**

**and he had been killed almost instantly. He hadn't been wearing a seat belt, the police said.**

**Otherwise he might have had a chance. **

John paused, Ian always wore a seat belt. Then he remembered that didn't matter as it was highly unlikely his brother had actually died in a car accident.

**Alex thought of the man who had been his only relation for as long as he could remember.**

"What?" Was voiced by both Ian and Helen but John continued.

**He had never known his own parents. They had both died in another accident, this one a plane crash, a**

**few weeks after he had been born.**

"Oh." Helen whispered before releasing her build up of tears, hand softly placed on her bulging stomach. John brought his hand not holding the book to rest upon hers. All Ian did was stare straight ahead, and hope that this book was some kind of sick joke, a hoax.

**He had been brought up by his father's brother (never "uncle"-Ian Rider had hated that word) and had spent fourteen years in the same terraced house in Chelsea London between the King's Road and the river. The two of them had always been close.**

Water still trailing down her face, Helen attempted to give Ian a smile. "That's good." She choked out. "At least he had you."

John nodded.

**Alex remembered the vacations they'd taken together, the many sports they'd played, the movies**

**they'd seen. They hadn't just been relations, they'd been friends. It was almost impossible to**

**imagine that he would never again see the man, hear his laughter, or twist his arm to get help with**

**his science homework.**

A reminiscent silence took over as they each tried to picture Alex's memories.

**Alex sighed, fighting against the sense of grief that was suddenly overwhelming. But what**

**saddened him the most was the realization- too late now- that, despite everything, he had hardly**

**known his uncle at all.**

**He was a banker. **

Dead silence, John paused before beginning again.

**People said Alex looked a little like him.**

"Hopefully not too much like him." John snorted.

Ian gave a weak glare. "Hey! I'm better looking than you!"

Helen gave a hiccupy giggle, breaking through the tense atmosphere of the room.

"Yeah right. In your dreams. Actually, nevermind. You probably do dream about it."

Ian opened his mouth to retort but was cut of by Helen. "Ok, boys enough. But for the record, I hope Alex looks more like John." She said, sending Ian a smirk.

**Ian Rider was always traveling. A quiet, **("Not quiet enough.")

**private man, who liked good wine, classical music, and books. Who didn't seem to have any**

**girlfriends **( "We know where all the good genes in the family went." "John!" "Sorry.") …**in fact he didn't have any friends at all. He had kept himself fit, had never smoked,**

**and had dressed expensively. But that wasn't enough. It wasn't a picture of a life. It was only a**

**thumbnail sketch.**

"**Are you all right Alex?" A young woman had come into the room. **

"I thought it said Ian couldn't get a girlfriend?"

**She was in her late twenties with a sprawl of red hair and a round, boyish face. Jack Starbright was American. She had come to London as a student seven years ago, rented a room in the house in return for light housework and**

**baby-sitting duties and had stayed on to become housekeeper and one of Alex's closest**

**companions. **

"Oh, that makes much more sense."

Helen glared at him. "John, if you don't stop interrupting yourself I'm going to ductape your mouth shut and read it myself!"

Having a heavily pregnant woman scream in your face is not exactly a pleasant experience. "Fine, fine."

Ian snickered.

John glared.

**Sometimes he wondered what the Jack was short for. Jackie? Jacqueline? Neither of them suited her and although he had once asked, she had never said.**

**Alex nodded. "What do you think will happen?" he asked.**

"**What do you mean?"**

"**To the house. To me. To you."**

"**I don't know." She shrugged "I guess Ian would have made a will," she said. "He'll have left instructions."**

"**Maybe we should look in his office."**

"That's probably not a good idea. Actually I'm sure MI6 will clear it out." Ian said.

"**Yeah. But not today, Alex. Let's take it one step at a time."**

**Ian's office was a room running the full length of the house, high up on the top- It was the only**

**room that was always locked-Alex had only been in there three or four times, and never on his**

**own. When he was younger he had fantasized that there might be something strange up there…a**

**time machine or a UFO.**

John looked up from the book, ready to comment, and got a full view of his wife's glare. He cleared his throat and returned his gaze to the book.

**But it was merely an office with a desk, a couple of filing cabinets, shelves**

**full of papers, and books. Bank stuff-that's what Ian said. Even so Alex wanted to go up there now.**

"**The police said he wasn't wearing his seat belt." Alex turned to look at Jack.**

**She nodded "Yeah. That's what they said."**

"**Doesn't that seem strange to you. You know how careful he was. He always wore his seat belt. He**

**wouldn't even drive me around the corner without making me put mine on."**

John nodded as Alex voiced the thought he'd had earlier. Ian was like the Seatbelt Nazi.

**Jack thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Yeah, it is strange," she said. "But that must have been**

**the way it was. Why would the police have lied?"**

Because of MI6, they all thought.

**The day dragged on. Alex hadn't gone to school even though, secretly, he wanted to. He would**

**have preferred to escape back into normal life, the clang of the bell, the crowds of familiar faces,**

**instead of sitting here, trapped inside the house.**

They all gave sad nods in agreement, having experienced that feeling at the loss of their parents.

**But he had to be there for the visitors who came**

**throughout the morning and the rest of the afternoon.**

**There were five of them. A lawyer who knew nothing about any will but seemed to have been**

**charged with organizing the funeral.**

Ian frowned. "I'm sure I would have left a will." In his line of work it was very important.

John shrugged. "MI6 probably have it."

**A funeral director who had been recommended by the lawyer.**

**A vicar-tall, elderly-who seemed disappointed that Alex refused to cry. **

Helen sniffed. "Now, really. Some people are ridiculous."

**A neighbor from across the road-how did she even know that anyone had died? And finally a man from the bank.**

At this they all tensed. John's grip on the book was tight enough to almost rip the book in half.

"**All of us at the Royal and General are deeply shocked," he said. He looked about thirty, wearing a**

**polyester suit with a Marks & Spencer tie. He had the sort of face you forget even while you're**

**looking at it and had introduced himself as Crawley, from personnel. "But if there's anything we can**

**do…"**

"Crawley… I think I know him." Ian said.

John frowned. "Yeah. And I'm getting a bad feeling about this."

"**What will happen?" Alex asked for the second time that day.**

"**You don't have to worry," Crawley said. "The bank will take care of everything. That's my job. You**

**leave everything to me."**

**The day passed. Alex killed a couple of hours knocking a few balls around on his uncle's snooker**

**table and then felt vaguely guilty when Jack caught him at it.**

"I totally understand." Ian said, nodding.

Helen gave him an odd look. "You do realize you're talking to a book, right?"

**But what else was he to do? Later on she took him to a Burger King. He was glad to get out of the house, but the two of them barely spoke. Alex assumed Jack would have to go back to America. She certainly couldn't stay in London**

**forever. So who would look after him? At fourteen, he was still too young to look after himself. His**

**whole future looked so uncertain that he preferred not to talk about it. He preferred not to talk at**

**all.**

This all made them thoroughly depressed.

"How could you have no plan for him?" John asked, a hint of underlying anger in his voice. "You know that, unfortuanately, this wasn't totally unexpected given what we do."

Helen looked almost sick at the reminder. "Oh leave him alone, John."

Not wanting to upset her John resumed reading.

**And then the day of the funeral arrived and Alex found himself dressed in a dark jacket and cords,**

**preparing to leave in a black car that had come from nowhere surrounded by people he had never**

**met. Ian Rider was buried in Brompton Cemetery on the Fulham Road, just in the shadow of the**

**Chelsea soccer field, and Alex knew where he would have preferred to be on that warm Wednesday afternoon.**

Helen smiled lightly. "He must play football. Just like you, John."

**About thirty people had turned up, but he hardly recognized any of them. A grave had**

**been dug close to the lane that ran the length of the cemetery, and as the service began, a black**

**Rolls Royce drew up, the back door opened, and a man got out. **

Ian shivered. It was surreal hearing about your own funeral.

**Alex watched him as he walked forward and stopped. Alex shivered. There was something about the new arrival that made his skin crawl.**

The trio held there breath; apprehensive.

**And yet the man was ordinary to look at. Gray suit, gray hair, gray lips, and gray eyes. His face was**

**Expressionless, the eyes behind the square, gunmetal spectacles, completely empty. **

The rigidness of both Ian and John told Helen that they were not particularly fond of this man, or his motives.

**Perhaps that was what had disturbed Alex. Whoever this man was, he seemed to have less life than anyone in the cemetery. Above or below ground.**

Ian and John nodded in full agreement, as would anyone who had the pleasure of meeting this particular man.

**Someone tapped Alex on the shoulder and he turned around to see Mr. Crawley leaning over him.**

"**That's Mr. Blunt," the personnel manager whispered. "He's the chairman of the bank."**

"Wait, that's your boss?" Helen questioned, stringing the pieces together.

"Yeah. And I really couldn't have described him much better myself." John answered. "Though, no offense, its surprising he's at your funeral, Ian. You must move up the ranks."

Ian rolled his eyes at his brother. "We can't all be THE John Rider. I'm a very important employee." He defended.

John gave a slight smirk. " Yeah, you're completely right. I'm one of a kind."

Helen gave him an appeasing look. "That's nice dear. Now keep reading before I show you why I'm 'THE Helen Rider'." She stated, using mocking air-quotes with her hands.

**Alex's eyes traveled past Blunt and over to the Rolls Royce. Two more men had come with him, one**

**of them driving. They were wearing identical suits and, although it wasn't a particularly bright day,**

**sunglasses. **

"Ah, MI6 lackeys." Ian mocked.

John snorted. "Yeah, you're one of them."

Before the argument could escalate Helen glared at them both, causing John to hastily begin reading.

**Both of them were watching the funeral with the same grim faces. Alex looked from**

**them to Blunt and then to the other people who had come to the cemetery. Had they really known**

**Ian Rider? Why had he never met any of them before? And why did he find it so difficult to believe**

**that they really worked for a bank?**

Ian nodded approvingly. "Observant." Causing John to don a light, proud smile.

"… **a good man, a patriotic man. He will be missed."**

**The vicar had finished his graveside address. His choice of words struck Alex as odd. Patriotic? That**

**meant he loved his country. But as far as Alex knew, Ian Rider had barely spent any time in it.**

**Certainly he had never been one for waving the Union Jack.**

This caused all three to snicker.

**He looked around hoping to find Jack, but saw instead that Blunt was making his way toward him, stepping carefully around the grave. "You must be Alex." **

"What does he want with Alex?" John eyed the book suspiciously.

**The chairman was only a little taller than him. Up close, his skin was strangely unreal. It could have been made of plastic. "My name is Alan Blunt," he said. "Your uncle often spoke about you."**

"Not to him I wouldn't." While he didn't particularly hate his boss, spying is a business that you really want to keep your personal life out of. Or at least try.

"**That's funny," Alex said. "He never mentioned you."**

"Cheeky. I wonder where that came from?" Ian mused, looking pointedly at Helen who just smiled broadly.

**The gray lips twitched briefly. "We'll miss him. He was a good man."**

"**What was he good at?" Alex asked. "He never talked about his work."**

**Suddenly Crawley was there. "Your uncle was overseas finance manager, Alex," he said. "He was**

**responsible for our foreign branches. You must have known that."**

"**I know he traveled a lot," Alex said. "And I know he was very careful. About things like seat belts."**

John winced. "Probably not a good thing to pry into."

"**Well, sadly, he wasn't careful enough." Blunt's eyes, magnified by the thick lenses of his spectacles,**

**lasered into his own, and for a moment, Alex felt himself pinned down; like an insect under a**

**microscope. "I hope we'll meet again," Blunt went on. He tapped the side of his face with a single**

**gray finger. "Yes…" Then he turned and went back to his car.**

"They better not." Helen threatened. "He should stay away from my son."

**That was when it happened. As Blunt was getting into the Rolls-Royce, the driver leaned down to**

**open the back door and his jacket fell open, revealing a stark white shirt underneath. There was a**

**black shape lying against it and that was what caught Alex's eye. The man was wearing a leather**

**holster with an automatic pistol strapped inside. Realizing what had happened, the driver quickly**

**straightened up and pulled the jacket across. Blunt had seen it too. He turned back and looked**

**again at Alex. Something very close to an emotion slithered over his face. Then he got into the car,**

**the door closed, and he was gone.**

**A gun at a funeral? Alex thought Why? Why should bank managers carry guns?**

"Well, shit." Ian stated. If Alex was anything like his parents he would be too curios for his own good.

"**Let's get out of here." Suddenly Jack was at his side. "Cemeteries give me the creeps."**

"**Yes. And quite a few creeps have turned up," Alex muttered.**

Helen chuckled, though it was obvious she was not really at ease. She was anxious about what was going to happen, it probably wouldn't be good.

**They slipped away quietly and went home. The car that had taken them to the funeral was still**

**Waiting, but they preferred the open air. The walk took them fifteen minutes and as they turned the**

**corner onto their street, Alex noticed a moving van parked in front of the house, the words**

**STRYKER & SON painted on its side.**

"**What's that doing…?" he began.**

**At the same moment the van shot off, the wheels skidding over the surface of the road.**

**Alex said nothing as Jack unlocked the door and let them in, but while she went into the kitchen to**

**make some tea, he quickly looked around the house. A letter that had been on the hall table now**

**lay on the carpet. A door that had been half open was now closed. Tiny details, but Alex's eyes**

**missed nothing. Somebody had been in the house. He was almost sure of it.**

They all looked impressed. For an untrained 14 year old he was very good. Helen shot John a glance as she was sure his observance didn't come from her.

**But he wasn't certain until he got to the top floor. The door to the office, which had always, always,**

**been locked, was now unlocked. Alex opened it and went in. The room was empty. Ian Rider had**

**gone and so had everything else. The desk drawers, the closets, the shelves, anything connected**

**to the dead man's work had been taken. Whatever the truth was about his uncle's past someone**

**had just wiped it out.**

"Well," John said. "That's the end of chapter one."

"Oh, let me read next." Helen said, already having stolen the book from John's hands.

"**Heaven for Cars"**

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><p><strong>These take a while to do so I'm not sure when I'll update next but I'll try not to make you wait. Please leave any comments and suggestions, AKA, REVIEW! Thanks for reading, I'm now going to watch Bones!YAY!<br>**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 2! I'm pretty sure this is a milestone in these fics. Haha. **

**Ok, anyway thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter: Fanfictionaddict1,ForgottenStory,ReillyScarecrowRocks(Yup, I'll be doing it in full chapters), 2whitie,Sajna18, Banana Sultana,Evgenia (thanks for the great advice:)), Jellie Smiff, Phantom Lightning, tiggerlily98,Books111,wolfegirl,PartyPony2(love the name btw),Storage-Jar(sorry I made you stay up, though I'm glad you liked it:) I've definitely considered doing them all, maybe if enough people wanted it),WrITinGthroughDARKNESS (I'll pretty much update randomly whenever I finish),SilverStar121(aww death threats, i'm touched:)), UniqueTeen,smojo12, armygirl1234, hopeindarkness, and youdon'tknowme123(dont worry, whenever I write 'the trio' I automatically think of Harry, Ron and Hermione)**

**You're what inspired me to get this done faster than I thought I would(I tend to procrastinate) and the amount of reviews just blew me away!**

**Disclaimer: If you're smart enough to read this you should be smart enough to know that I DON'T OWN ALEX RIDER! **

**P.S. Ian does not live with them, he was just visiting.  
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><p><strong>HEAVEN FOR CARS <strong>Helen read clearly.

**WITH HAMMERSMITH BRIDGE just ahead of him, Alex left the river and swung his bike through the lights and down the hill toward Brookland School.**

**The bike was a Condor Junior Roadracer, custom 531, built for him on his twelfth birthday. It was a teenager's bike with a cut down Reynolds frame but the wheels were full-size so he could ride at speed with hardly any rolling resistance. He spun past a delivery van and passed through the school gates. He would be sorry when he grew out of the bike. For two years now it had almost been part of him.**

The three seemed to relax a bit at what seemed to just be a normal day. But they couldn't shake the apprehension completely.

**He double locked it in the shed and went into the yard. Brookland was a modern school, all redbrick, and to Alex's eye rather ugly. He could have gone to any of the exclusive private schools around Chelsea, but Ian Rider had decided to send him here. He had said it would be more of a challenge.**

"Yeah, because you really challenged yourself in school." John said with a roll of his piercing blue eyes.

"Hey! I got good grades!" Ian protested.

"Yeah, but you were the worst procrastinater I've ever met. You were also a right little bastard in high school."

"Oh, yes. And you were the perfect child." Ian replied, motioning his hands in mockery.

Helen continued reading quite loudly, putting a stop to their argument. She really wanted to know about her son, it seemed this would be her only chance. She swallowed back tears. Stupid hormones.

**The first period of the day was algebra. When Alex came into the classroom the teacher, Mr. Donovan, was already chalking up a complicated equation on the board. It was hot in the room-the sun streaming in through the floor to ceiling windows-put in by architects who should have known better. As Alex took his place near the back he wondered how he was going to get through the lesson. How could he possibly think about algebra when there were so many other questions churning through his mind?**

**The gun at the funeral. The way Blunt had looked at him. The van with STRYKER & SON written on the side. The empty office. And the biggest mystery of all, the one detail that refused to go away. The seat belt. Ian Rider hadn't been wearing a seat belt.**

"Wow, I think that if MI6 knew how obviously compulsive about seatbelts you are they wouldn't have used that lie." John commented.

Helen ignored him.

**But of course he had. Ian Rider had never been one to give lectures. He had always said Alex should make up his own mind about things. But he'd had this thing about seat belts.**

"Compulsive." John coughed into his hand.

Ian glared at him. "Would you rather I didn't instill good safety habits into your son's head?"

John shut up.

**The more Alex thought about it, the less he believed it. A collision in the middle of the city. Suddenly he wished he could see the car. At least the wreckage would tell him that the accident had really happened, that Ian Rider had really died that way.**

Helen's voice shook as she read the words and Ian's looked slightly sick at even having to read about the cause of his death. John's body had noticeably stiffened.

**"Alex? "**

**Alex looked up and realized that everyone was staring at him. Mr. Donovan had just asked him something. He quickly scanned the blackboard, taking in the figures. "Yes, Sir." he said. "X equals seven and Y is fifteen,"**

Helen smiled wistfully. "He's smart too."

Ian looked as though he was going to make a sarcastic comment, but refrained at the look on her face.

**The math teacher sighed. "Yes, Alex. You're absolutely right. But actually I was just asking you to open the window."**

Ian let out a half-hearted snort. Not quite able to forget that his own death was the reason Alex was so preoccupied.

**Somehow, he managed to get through the rest of the day, but by the time the final bell rang his mind was made up. While everyone else streamed out, he made his way to the secretary's office and borrowed a copy of the Yellow Pages.**

**"What are you looking for?" the secretary asked. Miss Bedfordshire had always had a soft spot for Alex.**

Helen smiled softly. Alex must be a good kid.

**"Auto junkyards." Alex flicked through the pages. "If a car got smashed up near Old Street they'd take it somewhere near wouldn't they?"**

"Oh, no. He's actually going to try and find the car. I don't think this is going to end well." Helen said with a worried look.

Both of the men agreed.

**"I suppose so."**

**"Here." Alex had found the yards listed under Auto Wreckers. But there were dozens of them fighting for attention over four pages.**

"**Is this for a school project?" the secretary asked. She knew Alex had lost a relative but not how.**

**"Sort of." Alex was reading the addresses, but they told him nothing.**

**"This one's quite near Old Street." Miss Bedfordshire pointed at the corner of the page.**

**"Wait!" Alex tugged the book toward him and looked at the entry underneath the one the secretary had chosen.**

**J.B STRYKER AUTO WRECKERS**

**Heaven for Cars**

**CALL US TODAY**

"Wow, that's really sloppy on MI6's part." Ian remarked, silently wondering if it was something more.

**"That's in Vauxhall." Miss Bedfordshire said. "Not too far from here."**

**"I know." But Alex had recognized the name J.B Stryker. He thought back to the van he had seen outside his house on the day of the funeral. Stryker & Son. Of course it might just be a coincidence but it was still somewhere to start.**

"There are no coincidences." John recited with a shake of his head.

**He closed the book. "I'll see you Miss Bedfordshire."**

**"Be careful." The secretary watched Alex leave, wondering why she had said that. Maybe it was his eyes. Dark and serious, there was something dangerous there. **

"He's only 14!" Helen exclaimed, alarmed.

**Then the telephone rang and she forgot him as she went back to work.**

**J.B Stryker's was a square of wasteland behind the railway tracks running out of Waterloo Station.**

**The area was enclosed by a high brick wall topped with broken glass and razor wire. Two wooden gates hung open and, from the other side of the road, Alex could see a shed with a security window and beyond it the tottering piles of dead and broken cars. Everything of any value had been stripped away and only the rusting carcasses remained heaped one on top of the other waiting to be fed into the crusher. There was a guard sitting in the shed reading a newspaper. In the distance a bulldozer coughed into life then roared down on a battered Ford Taurus, its metal claw smashing through the window to scoop up the vehicle and carry it away. A telephone rang somewhere in the shed and the guard turned around to answer it. That was enough for Alex. Holding his bike, and wheeling it along beside him, he sprinted through the gates. **

Helen paused to turn and glare at John; sure this recklessness did not come from her.

**He found himself surrounded by dirt and debris. The smell of diesel was thick in the air and the roar of the engines was deafening. Alex watched as a crane swooped down on one of the cars, seized it in a metallic grip, and dropped it into a crusher. For a moment the car rested on a pair of shelves. Then the shelves lifted up-toppling the car over and down into a trough. The operator sitting in a glass cabin at one end of the crusher pressed a button and there was a great belch of black smoke. The shelves closed in on the car like a monster insect folding in its wings. There was a grinding sound as the car was crushed until it was no bigger than a rolled up carpet. Then the operator threw a gear and the car was squeezed out metallic toothpaste, being chopped up by a hidden blade.**

"Why does all this description give me a bad feeling?" Ian said, only half-questioning.

Neither Helen nor John answered.

**The slices tumbled to the ground.**

**Leaving his bike propped against the wall, Alex ran farther into the yard, crouching down behind the wrecks. With the din from the machines there was no chance that anyone would hear him but he was still afraid of being seen. He stopped to catch his breath, drawing a grimy hand across his face. His eyes were watering from the diesel fumes. The air was as filthy as the ground beneath him.**

**He was beginning to regret coming, but then he saw it-His uncle's BMW was parked a few yards away, separated from the other cars. At first glance it looked absolutely fine, the metallic silver bodywork not even scratched. **

Ian's stomach clenched nervously.

**Certainly there was no way that this car could have been involved in a fatal collision with a truck, or with anything else. But it was definitely his uncle's car. Alex recognized the license plate. He hurried closer and it was now that he saw that the car was damaged after all. The windshield had been smashed along with all the windows on the driver's side.**

Helen's voice began to shake slightly.

**Alex made his way around to the other side. And froze. Ian Rider hadn't died in any accident. What had killed him was plain to see-even to someone who had never seen such a thing before. A spray of bullets had caught the car full on the driver's side, shattering the front tire, smashing the windshield and side windows, and punching into the side**

**panels. **

Helen gasped, though she wasn't really surprised. Ian had a look as though fighting being sick and John's hand, his arm draped across her shoulders, gripped he arm tightly.

**Alex ran his fingers over the holes. The metal felt cold against his flesh. He opened the door and looked inside. The front seats' pale gray leather were strewn with fragments of broken glass and stained with patches of dark brown. **

Helen took a shaky breath.

**He didn't need to ask what the stain was. He could see everything. The flash of the machine gun, the bullets ripping into the car, Ian Rider jerking in the driver's seat…**

The room was absolutely silent aside from Helen's reading and the men's slightly unsteady breathing.

**But why? Why kill a bank manager? And why had the murder been covered up? It was the police who had delivered the news that night, so they must be part of it. Had they lied deliberately? None of it made sense.**

Maybe not to Alex but to the trio it all made terrifyingly perfect sense.

**"You should have gotten rid of it two days ago. Do it now."**

**The machines must have stopped for a moment. If there hadn't been a sudden lull Alex would never have heard the men coming. Quickly he looked across the steering wheel and out the other side. There were two of them, both dressed in loose fitting overalls. Alex had a feeling he'd seen them before. At the funeral. One of them was the driver, the man he had seen with the gun. He was sure of it.**

"If they catch him…" John let the sentence hang in the thick tension.

**Whoever they were, they were only a few paces away from the car, talking in low voices. Another few steps and they would be there. Without thinking, Alex threw himself into the only hiding place available: inside the car itself. Using his foot, he hooked the door and closed it. At the same time he became aware that the machines had started again and he could no longer hear the men. He didn't dare look up. A shadow fell across the window as the two men passed. But then they were gone. He was safe.**

There was an audible sigh of relief.

**And then something hit the BMW with such force that Alex cried out, his whole body caught in a massive shock wave that tore him away from the steering wheel and threw him helplessly into the back. **

"Oh my God!" Helen shrieked in panic before frantically returning to the book, words tumbling quickly from her lips.

**The roof buckled and three huge metal fingers tore through the skin of the car like a fork through an eggshell, trailing dust and sunlight. One of the fingers grazed the side of his head…any closer and it would have cracked his skull.**

At this point normally-calm-John gripped his wife's arm so tightly it might bruise, in her panic she didn't notice.

**Alex yelled as blood trickled over his eye. He tried to move, then was jerked back a second time as the car was yanked off the ground and tilted high up in the air.**

At this point Helen's reading was lightning fast, trying to get through it as fast as possible in hopes of a good ending. Ian and John both leaned towards her and the book.

**He couldn't see. He couldn't move. But his stomach lurched as the car swung in an arc, the metal grinding and the light spinning. The BMW had been picked up by the crane. It was going to be put inside the crusher. **Helen let out a terrified squeak.

**With him inside.**

**He tried to raise himself up, to wave through the windows. But the claw of the crane had already flattened the roof, pinning his left leg, perhaps even breaking it. **

John moved his hand not on Helen's shoulder to her round stomach, as though it could protect not just his unborn, but his future child from harm.

**He could feel nothing. He lifted a hand and managed to pound on the back window, but he couldn't break the glass.**

Helen's voice was raising octaves in despair. How could the future hold so much death? Her, John, Ian, her baby… No, there was still 7 books left, he couldn't die. Yet.

**Even if the workmen were staring at the BMW, they would never see anything moving inside.**

**His short flight across the junkyard ended with a bone shattering crash as the crane deposited the car on the iron shelves of the crusher. Alex tried to fight back his sickness and despair and think of what to do-Any moment now the operator would send the car tipping into the coffin shaped trough. **

Horror at the thought spread through each of their bodies like uncontrollable fire.

**The machine was a Lefort Shear, a slow motion guillotine. At the press of a button the two wings would close on the car, with a joint pressure of five hundred tons. The car with-Alex inside it-would be crushed beyond recognition. And the broken metal and flesh would then be chopped into sections.**

At this sentence Helen stood abruptly and rushed to the bathroom, retching. John ran after her, passed the cheerful family photos hung on the walls, and wiped off her shivering face.

A minute later she swiped his hand away. "I'm fine. Really. I just want to keep reading."

John at her, concerned. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." She stated firmly, a stubborn look in her eyes.

He sighed. "Okay." He replied gently, helping her back to the couch where she snatched up the book and continued.

**Nobody would ever know what had happened.**

**He tried with all his strength to free himself. But the roof was too low. His leg was trapped. Then his whole world tilted and he felt himself falling into darkness. The shelves had lifted. The BMW slid to one side and fell the few yards into the trough. Alex felt the metalwork collapsing all around him.**

Helen held back a whimper.

**The back window exploded and glass showered around his head dust and diesel fumes, punching into his nose and eyes. **

John looked at Helen's determined eyes, wondering if they were exactly the same shade of dark brown that he loved so much.

**There was hardly any daylight, looking out of the back he could see the huge steel head of the piston that would push what was left of the car through the exit hole on the other side.**

**The engine tone of the Lefort Shear changed as it prepared for the final act. The metal wings shuddered. In a few seconds time the two of them would meet, crumpling the BMW like a paper**

**bag.**

Helen continued hurriedly, not wanting to picture it.

**Alex pulled with all his strength and was astonished when his leg came free. **

A little hope crashed through the trio's despair.

**It took him perhaps a second- one precious second-to work out what had happened. When the car had fallen into the**

**trough it had landed on its side. The roof had buckled again, just enough to free him. His hand scrabbled for the door but of course that was useless. The doors were too bent-They would never open. The back window. **

"Good idea." Ian murmured.

**With the glass gone he could crawl through the frame but only if he moved fast.**

A repetitive prayer of _please,please,please,please,_ ran through Helen's mind.

**The wings began to move. The BMW screamed as two walls of solid steel, relentlessly crushed it.**

**More glass shattered. One of the wheel axles snapped with the sound of a thunderbolt. Darkness began to close in.**

**Alex grabbed hold of what was left of the backseat. Ahead of him he could see a single triangle of light, shrinking faster and faster. He could feel the weight of the two walls pressing down on him.**

**The car was no longer a car but the fist of some hideous monster-snatching at the insect that Alex had become.**

**With all his strength, he surged forward. His shoulders passed through the triangle, out into the light. Next came his legs, but at the last moment his shoe caught on a piece of jagged metal. He**

**jerked and the shoe was pulled off, falling back into the car. Alex heard the sound of the leather being squashed. Finally, clinging to the black oily surface of the observation platform at the back of the crusher, he dragged himself clear and managed to stand up.**

"Oh, thank God." Helen breathed.

"That was way too close for my liking." John commented, his deep voice sounding relieved.

**He found himself face-to-face with a man so fat that he could barely fit into the small cabin of the crusher. The man's stomach was pressed against the glass, his shoulders squeezed into the corners. A cigarette dangled on his lower lip as his mouth fell open and his eyes stared. **

Ian chuckled slightly, imagining the look on the man's face.

**What he saw was a boy in the rags of what had once been a school uniform. A whole sleeve had been torn off and his arm, streaked with blood and oil, hung limply by his side.**

"He should go to the hospital." Helen spoke protectively, trying not to dwell on the fact that she couldn't be there with him.

**By the time the operator had taken this all in, come to his senses, and turned the machine off, the boy had gone.**

**Alex clambered down the side of the crusher, landing on the one foot that still had a shoe. He was aware now of the pieces of jagged metal lying everywhere. If he wasn't careful he would cut open the other foot.**

"Great. That'd be another thing to add to the list."

**His bicycle was where he had left it, leaning against the wall, and, gingerly half hopping, he made for it. Behind him he heard the cabin of the crusher open and a man's voice called out, raising the alarm. **

The look on John's clearly declared that if the man didn't let his son go, there would be hell to pay. Though as this was set in the future and he was currently glaring at a book, it would difficult to follow up on that threat.

**At the same time a second man ran forward, stopping between Alex and his bike. It was the driver, the man he had seen at the funeral. His face, twisted into a hostile frown, was curiously ugly: greasy hair, watery eyes, pale lifeless skin.**

**"What do you think…" he began. His hand slid into his jacket, Alex remembered the gun and instantly, without even thinking, swung into action.**

"Action…?" Helen questioned.

**He had started learning karate when he was six years old.**

John raised an eyebrow at his brother. "Maybe a little young, but good."

**One afternoon, with no explanation, Ian Rider had taken him to a local club for his first lesson and he had been going there once a week ever since. Over the years he had passed through the various Kyu student grades. But it was only the year before that he had become a first grade Dan- a black belt. **

Ian whistled, impressed.

**When he had arrived at Brookland School his gentle looks and accent had quickly brought him to the attention of the school bullies: three hulking sixteen year olds. They had cornered him once behind the bike shed.**

Luckily the book was an inanimate object so the phrase "if looks could kill" didn't apply.

**The encounter lasted less than a minute. The next day one of the bullies had left Brookland and the other two had never troubled anyone again.**

That earned proud smiles from the expecting parents and uncle.

**Now Alex brought up one leg, twisted his body around, and lashed out. The back kick, Ushiro Geri, is said to be the most lethal in karate. His foot powered into the man's abdomen with such force that the man didn't even have time to cry out. His eyes bulged and his mouth half opened in surprise. Then, with his hand still halfway into his jacket, he crumpled to the ground.**

Helen and John's eyes widened.

"Wow, he's good." Ian praised.

**Alex jumped over him, snatched up his bike, and swung himself onto it. In the distance a third man was running toward him. He heard the single word "Stop!" called out. Then there was a crack and a bullet whipped past.**

"Now really, is it necessary to shoot. He's just 14!"Helen admonished.

"Well, yes. But he also just bested a grown man…" John pointed out, though not happy with the predicament either.

**Alex gripped the handlebars and pedaled as hard as he could. The bike shot forward over the rubble and out through the gates. He took one look over his shoulder. Nobody had followed him.**

**With one shoe on and one shoe off, his clothes in rags, and his body streaked with oil, Alex knew he must look a strange sight. But then he thought back to his last seconds inside the crusher and sighed with relief. He could be looking a lot worse.**

"Yes, let's be very thankful for that." Helen agreed before handing the book to Ian who'd not yet had the pleasure to read.

**ROYAL & GENERAL**

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><p><strong>I hope everyone wasn't too OOC, I tried to keep it emotional but realistic... so tell me how I did. I'm actually pretty pumped for the next chapter so I'll attempt to do it this weekend. Thanks for reading:)<br>**


	4. Chapter 4

**GASP. An update? I know, please control your excitement. jk. Anyway, sorry this took kinda long but I've actually been busy, which is surprising since I really have no life. I've also been sick, still am, and my Christmas present to my family this year was to sneeze and cough all over them. **

**Now here comes the part where I thank all of my amazing readers and of course reviewers: ReillyScarecrowRocks,PartyPony2,Pheonix Revenge, Sajna18 (sorry, not this chapter but I'm thinking that I may add Yassen next chapter, I'll do a poll),Phantom Lightning,Storage-Jar,Fanfictionaddict1,armygirl1234,SilverStar121(I meant that there are tons of different shades of brown his eyes could be, they're not all the same. Sorry if it only made sense in my head :)), May-The-Wolf-Girl,Jellie Smiff,wolfiergirl,Evgenia,Books111,WrITInGthroughDARKNESS,(I used an idea from a your review of the 1st chapter, I hope you like how it came out)and fan of alex rider books. **

**Also, I've had a few reviews saying to add more comments so I tried to do that with this chapter.**

**Disclaimer: Unless you have dyslexia (like Percy Jackson, ah!3) you should definitely know by now that I DO NOT OWN ALEX RIDER!  
><strong>

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><p><strong>ROYAL &amp; GENERAL<strong>

**THE BANK CALLED the following day.**

**"This is John Crawley. Do you remember me? Personnel manager at the Royal and General. We were wondering if you could come in."**

"**Come in?" Alex was half dressed already late for school.**

"Alex!" Helen admonished. Ian rolled his eyes.

**"This afternoon. We found some papers of your uncle's… We need to talk to you about your own position."**

**Was there something faintly threatening in the man's voice?**

They all tensed at this, sure that whatever reason they really had for asking Alex to come wouldn't be good.

"**What time this afternoon?" Alex asked.**

**"Could you manage half past four? We're on Liverpool Street. We can send a cab."**

"**I'll be there." Alex said. "And I'll take the tube."**

**He hung up.**

Helen grinned but John and Ian looked slightly worried. It wasn't exactly the best idea to say no to and then hang up on MI6. Of course Alex doesn't know they're MI6…

**"Who was that?" Jack called out of the kitchen. She was cooking breakfast for the two of them although how long she could remain with Alex was a growing worry. Her wages hadn't been paid.**

**She had only her own money to buy food and pay for the running of the house. Worse still, her visa was about to expire. Soon she wouldn't even be allowed to stay in the country.**

"I have a feeling MI6 will have a solution to that." John said. He frowned. "But I'm not sure we'll like it."

**"That was the bank." Alex came into the room wearing his spare uniform. He hadn't told her what had happened at the junkyard.**

"How could he keep that from her? He looked like a wreck and was hurt!" Helen exclaimed; trying not to think about the fact that she should be the one Alex tried to lie to. Not that she'd let him get away with it. Then again, being the son of a spy might give him an advantage…

**Jack had enough on her mind.**

"Oh, Alex. I'm sure she'd want to know." Helen said softly. She was a little sad that Alex obviously thought that he had to take on the role of protector. He was only 14.

"**I'm going there this afternoon," he said.**

**"Do you want me to come?"**

**"No I'll be fine."**

**He came out of Liverpool Street tube station just after four-fifteen that afternoon, still wearing his school clothes: dark blue jacket, gray trousers, striped tie.**

Helen momentarily forgot her worry as she pictured a younger version of John with her eyes. She sighed.

**He found the bank easily enough. The Royal & General occupied a tall, antique-looking building with a Union Jack fluttering from a pole**

**about fifteen floors up. There was a brass plaque with the name next to the main door and a security camera swiveling slowly over the pavement.**

**Alex stopped in front of it. For a moment he wondered if he was making a mistake going in.**

Ian and John were both thinking along the same lines. They didn't think MI6 usually interfered this much in these types of situations. At least not so openly.

**If the bank had been responsible in some way for Ian Rider's death, it was always possible they had asked him here to arrange his own.**

The normally-calm-John tensed. They better not even think about it. Especially since John wasn't there to protect Alex. No one was.

**But why would anyone from the bank want to kill him? He didn't even have an account there. **

**He went inside and in an office on the seventeenth floor the image on the television monitor flickered #1 #2 #3 and changed as Street Camera smoothly cut across to reception cameras and everything was dark and shadowy inside. A man sitting behind a desk saw Alex come in and pressed a button. #2 Camera zoomed in until Alex's face filled the screen.**

**"So, he came." the chairman of the bank muttered.**

"Wait. Chairman? As in Mr. Blunt? What does he want with Alex?" Helen asked trying to keep her voice level. The hand that strayed protectively to her stomach gave away her worry.

"I don't know." John said truthfully. Sure, he had suspicions but he didn't want to even consider any of them right now.

**"That's the boy?" The speaker was a middle-aged woman. She had a strange, potato-shaped head and her black hair looked as if it had been cut using a pair of blunt scissors and an upturned bowl.**

**Her eyes were almost as black as her hair. She was dressed in a severe gray suit and was sucking a peppermint. "Are you sure about this, Alan?" she asked.**

"Sure about what?" Helen asked a bit frantically, looking from Ian to John.

"It's probably nothing." John said, rubbing her arm in a calming manner. Though the apprehensive looks on their faces did nothing to help reassure her.

**Alan Blunt nodded. "Oh yes. Quite sure. You know what to do." This last question was addressed to his driver, who was also in the room.**

**The driver was standing uncomfortably, slightly hunched over. His face was a chalky white. He had been like that ever since he had tried to stop Alex in the auto junkyard.**

Ian and John smirked in such a similar manner it could almost be deemed creepy.

"**Yes, sir." he said.**

**"Then do it." Blunt said. His eyes never left the screen.**

**In the lobby, Alex had asked for John Crawley and was sitting on a leather sofa, vaguely wondering why so few people were going in or out. The reception area was quiet and claustrophobic, with a brown marble floor, three elevators to one side, and above the desk a row of clocks showing the time in every major world city. But it could have been the entrance to anywhere. A hospital.**

Helen winced. Though she usually had no problem with hospitals, she even worked at one, when it was her family it was different. Especially since she had a bad feeling that this place, these people, could put her son in a hospital for the rest of his life. She stopped her train of thought there, not wanting it to carry her any further, and continued listening to Ian.

**A concert hall. Even a cruise liner. The place had no identity of its own.**

**One of the elevators slid open and Crawley appeared in the same suit he had worn at the funeral but with a different tie. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Alex." he said. "Have you come straight from school?"**

**Alex stood up but said nothing, allowing his uniform to answer the man's question.**

Helen smiled wistfully, again picturing him in his uniform. Reading about him and seeing him were two different things. Acting on impulse she grabbed the book from a surprised Ian's hands. He held them up in surrender, deciding it was probably best not to argue with the pregnant woman.

John looked at her concernedly. "Um… Helen. What are you doing?" He questioned in a light, cautious tone.

She shushed him and began shaking the book, making both men doubt her sanity.

John was about to question her again when her vigorous shaking paid off. Three rectangular pieces of paper floated into Helen's lap. She tossed the book back to Ian and snatched them up victoriously.

She smiled widely and examined them. "Oh, John. Look at him." She whispered.

John looked and saw that she was holding pictures. All three photos were of the same blonde boy with serious brown eyes. In one he appeared to be about 5 or six, his adorable face alight with joy as he smiled at the camera. In another he appeared about 14, the age he was in this book, and on vacation somewhere. The sun shining on his handsome face and his skin tanned from days at the beach filling the picture's background. In the last picture he appeared slightly older physically but the most difference was in his dark brown eyes that seemed to exude a sort of maturity rare in those his age. The eyes of someone who'd seen too much. Despite this, he was grinning wildly; arm in arm with a young woman with bright red hair they assumed was Jack. Bulrushes sprouted behind them and the sun looked blazing hot, as though attempting to burn through the very picture. By this point the room was silent as the trio just stared at their future son and nephew.

"He looks just like you, John." Helen said softly, as though afraid to speak any louder and break the awe-filled atmosphere.

John pulled her in close but never took his eyes of the pictures. "Yeah." He breathed. "But he's got your eyes."

They stayed in that quiet moment for a while before Ian decided it would be best to continue reading.

"**Let's go up to my office." Crawley said. He gestured. "We'll take the elevator."**

**Alex didn't notice the fourth camera inside the elevator, but then it was concealed on the other side of the one-way mirror that covered the back wall. Nor did he see the thermal intensifier next to the camera. But this second machine both looked at him and through him as he stood there, turning him into a pulsating mass of different colors, none of which translated into the cold steel of a hidden gun or knife.**

"I should hope not." Helen stated, almost threateningly. Her son should have weapons.

**In less than the time it took Alex to blink, the machine had passed its information down to a computer that had instantly evaluated and then sent its own signal back to the circuits that controlled the elevator. It's OK. He's unarmed. Continue to the fifteenth floor.**

**"Here we are." Crawley smiled and ushered Alex out into a long corridor with an uncarpeted wooden floor and modern lighting. A series of doors were punctuated by brightly colored abstract paintings. "My office is just along here." Crawley pointed the way. They had passed three doors when Alex stopped. Each door had a nameplate and this one he knew 1504: Ian Rider.**

Ian paled slightly but John was thinking.

"They obviously led him by your office for a reason. It's a test."

What it was a test for, he would not say. He really didn't want to think of the implications.

**White letters on black plastic.**

**Crawley nodded sadly. "Yes. This was where your uncle worked. He'll be much missed."**

John snorted. "Yup, that's Ian. Always the social butterfly."

Ian glared at him.

John shrugged apologetically. "What? You know it's true."

It was Helen's turn to glare. "If you two are done, I would like to hear the rest."

"**Can I go inside?" Alex asked.**

**Crawley seemed surprised. "Why do you want to do that?"**

"**I'd be interested to see where he worked."**

"No, you probably don't."

**"I'm sorry." Crawley sighed. "The door will have been locked and I don't have the key. Another time perhaps." He gestured again. He used his hands like a magician as if he were about to produce a fan of cards. **

Ian snorted loudly.

"**I have the office next door. Just here."**

**They went into 1505. It was a large square room, with three windows looking out over the station.**

**There was a flutter of red and blue outside and Alex remembered the flag he had seen. The flagpole was right next to the office. Inside there was a desk and chair, a couple of sofas in the corner, a fridge on the wall, a couple of prints. A boring executive's office. Perfect for a boring executive.**

"Well, I can't argue with that. But I'm pretty sure Crawley's more than just a boring executive." John said.

**"Please, Alex. Sit down." Crawley said. He went over to the fridge. "Can I get you a drink?"**

**"Do you have Coke?"**

**"Yes." Crawley opened a can and filled a glass, then handed it to Alex. "Ice?"**

**"No, thanks." Alex took a sip. It wasn't Coke. It wasn't even Pepsi. He recognized the oversweet, slightly cloying taste of supermarket cola and wished he'd asked for water. "So what do you want to talk to me about?"**

**"Your uncle's will…"**

**The telephone rang and with another hand sign, this one for 'excuse me', Crawley answered it. He spoke for a few moments, then hung up again. "I'm very sorry, Alex. I have to go back down to the lobby. Do you mind?"**

**"Go ahead." Alex settled himself on the sofa.**

**"I'll be about five minutes." With a final nod of apology, Crawley left.**

**Alex waited a few seconds. Then he poured the cola into a potted plant and stood up.**

Helen had to snicker slightly. She may have done that herself once…or twice.

**He went over to the door and back into the corridor. At the far end a woman carrying a bunch of papers appeared and disappeared through a door. There was no sign of Crawley. Quickly, Alex moved back**

**to the door of 1504 and tried the handle… But Crawley had been telling the truth. It was locked.**

**Alex went back into Crawley's office. He would have given anything to spend a few minutes alone in Ian Rider's office. Somebody thought the dead man's work was important enough to keep hidden from him.**

"Well, thank God he can't get in. Even if there's nothing in there he's way to clever for his own good." Ian stated.

"Yeah, is it just me or is MI6 getting a little too sloppy." John said worriedly, almost hoping for someone to disagree. Neither did.

**They had broken into his house and cleaned out everything they'd found in the office there. Perhaps the office next door might tell him why. What exactly was Ian Rider involved in? And was it the reason why he had been killed?**

John groaned. "Leave it alone, Alex."

Both Ian and Helen decided it would probably be best not to point out to John that he was talking to a book.

**The flag fluttered again and, seeing it, Alex went over to the window. The pole jutted out of the building, exactly halfway between rooms 1504 and 1505.**

**If he could somehow reach it, he should be able to jump onto the ledge that ran along the side of the building outside room 1504.**

"Wow, I take back the clever thing." He said. "Your son's certifiably insane." He looked knowingly at John. "Must be genetic." Despite his joking attitude he was definitely shaken. Though not as much as Helen who was staring at a photo of her son and swearing under her breath. When John tried to comfort her she glared at him. "This is your fault. He definitely got this from you."

Deciding it was best to stop her now Ian continued reading.

**Of course he was fifteen floors up. If he jumped and missed there would be a couple of hundred feet to fall. It was a stupid idea. It wasn't even worth thinking about.**

Helen let out a breath of relief. "Thank God he got some of my sense."

**Alex opened the window and climbed out. **

Helen turned to John desperately. "What is he doing? He just said it was a stupid idea!"

"Well, at least he acknowledged it wasn't a good idea." John replied weakly.

Somehow this failed to comfort Helen who looked ready to hyperventilate.

**It was better not to think about it at all. **

"No it's not!" Helen practically screamed. "Didn't anyone teach you to think your actions through?"

**He would just do it. **

Helen had John's arm in a death grip. He winced. Mostly at what his son was about to do.

**After all, if this was the ground floor or a jungle gym in the school yard it would be child's play.**

Helen whimpered.

**It was only the sheer brick wall stretching down to the pavement, the cars and buses moving like toys, so far below and the blast of the wind against his face that made it terrifying. Don't think about it. **

Ian began to read faster as neither Helen nor John looked as though they would survive the suspense.

**Do it.**

"Please don't. Please don't." Helen repeated, clinching her eyes shut.

**Alex lowered himself onto the ledge outside Crawley's office. His hands were behind him, clutching onto the windowsill. He took a deep breath. And jumped.**

"Oh my God!" Helen shrieked.

John seemed to have lost the air needed to voice words.

**A camera in the office across the road caught Alex as he launched himself into space. Two floors above Alan Blunt was still sitting in front of the screen. He chuckled. It was a humorless sound. "I told you," he said. "The boy's extraordinary."**

"He doesn't need praise from you." John snapped, having found his voice.

Ian growled in agreement.

**"The boy's quite mad." the woman retorted.**

Helen let out a dry sob.

**"Well, maybe that's what we need."**

"Leave him alone." John threatened, his worst suspicions confirmed.

**"You're just going to sit here and watch him kill himself?"**

This comment prompted Helen to begin crying in earnest, tears flowing from her pretty, brown eyes.

**"I'm going to sit here and hope that he survives."**

**Alex had miscalculated the jump. **

Helen tried to suck in a breath but she couldn't stop the sobs ripping through her chest. Meanwhile, John could feel his own heart clenching and tightening itself into a knot.

**He had missed the flagpole by an inch and would have plunged down to the pavement if his hands hadn't caught hold of the Union Jack itself. **

Ian had to stop reading to release an audible sigh of relief.

**He was hanging now, with his feet in midair. Slowly, with huge effort, he pulled himself up, his fingers hooking into the material. Somehow, he managed to climb back up onto the pole. **

Helen's hysterical crying had calmed down leaving only silent tears tracing her face as her body quivered.

**He still didn't look down. He just hoped that no passersby looked up.**

**It was easier after that. He squatted on the pole, then threw himself sideways and across to the ledge outside Ian Rider's office. **

John flinched.

**He had to be careful. Too far to the left and he would crash into the side of the building, but too far the other way and he would fall. In fact, he landed perfectly, grabbing hold of the ledge with both hands and then pulling himself up until he was level with the window.**

Helen was praying silently. She may not be religious but now seemed a better time than any to start.

**It was only now that he wondered if the window would be locked. If so he'd just have to go back.**

John hoped it wasn't locked. Helen didn't look as though she could handle him jumping back.

**It wasn't. Alex slid the window open and hoisted himself into the second office, which was, in many ways, a carbon copy of the first. It had the same furniture, the same carpet, even a similar painting on the wall. He went over to the desk and sat down. The first thing he saw was a photograph of himself taken the summer before on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe where he had gone diving. There was a second picture tucked into the corner of the frame, Alex aged five or six. **

Helen's voice was hoarse has she exclaimed, "We have those to pictures!" Holding up the corresponding photos as though proof was necessary.

Ian and John both looked at them. "You're right. I wonder if the third one's in these books too." John said curiously.

**He was surprised and a little saddened by the photographs. Ian Rider had been more sentimental than he had pretended.**

Ian seemed depressed, but unsurprised. He was a spy; of course he was good at hiding his emotions. But Alex had to know how much he loved him… right? He wasn't even born yet and Ian knew that for certain.

**Alex glanced at his watch. About three minutes had passed since Crawley had left the office and he had said he would be back in five. If he was going to find anything here, he had to find it quickly.**

**He pulled open a drawer in the desk. It contained four or five thick files. Alex took them and opened them. He saw at once that they had nothing to do with banking.**

"Great. Let's let the 14 year old boy look at the top secret files." John said sarcastically.

**The first was marked NERVE POISONS: NEW METHODS OF CONCEALMENT AND DISSEMINATION. Alex put it aside and looked at the second, ASSASSINATIONS: FOUR CASE STUDIES. Growing ever more puzzled, he quickly flicked through the rest of the files which covered counterterrorism, the movement of uranium across Europe, and interrogation techniques. The last file was simply labeled: STORMBREAKER.**

**Alex was about to read it when the door suddenly opened and two men walked in.**

"Shit." Ian seemed to voice all of their thoughts.

**One of them was Crawley. The other was the driver from the junkyard. Alex knew that there was no point trying to explain what he was doing. He was sitting behind the desk with the Stormbreaker file open in his hands.**

"Yeah, I don't think you can lie your way out of this one, son."

Ian looked at John. "You do realize that you're talking to a book, right?"

John just shot him a dirty look.

**But at the same time he realized that the two men weren't surprised to see him there. From the way they had come into the room, they had expected to find him.**

**"This isn't a bank." Alex said. "Who are you? Was my uncle working for you? Did you kill him?"**

**"So many questions." Crawley muttered. "But I'm afraid we're not authorized to give you the answers."**

**The second man lifted his hand and Alex saw that he was holding a gun. He stood up behind the desk, holding the file as if to protect himself. "No…" he began.**

**The man fired. **

Helen, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, screamed. "They shot my son!"

**There was no explosion. **

"It's okay Helen. It was probably just a dart gun."

Helen made up for the lack of explosion in the book by yelling, "Ok? No it's not okay! I don't care what kind of gun it is, the only place it's acceptable to shoot a 14 year old is paintball!"

John didn't really have a response to that.

**The gun spat at Alex and he felt something slam into his heart. His hand opened, and the file tumbled to the ground. Then, his legs buckled, the room twisted, and he fell back into nothing.**

John looked at wife who looked nothing short of a mess. "Okay, I think we should all go to bed and continue reading in the morning."

Ian nodded.

His wife looked ready to argue, but seemed to think better of it and also gave a tired nod.

* * *

><p><strong>Next chapter is "So, What do you say?" hopefully I can get it up this week. Please review, I love your feedback!<strong>


	5. Chapter 5

**Whew another chapter. First off I'd like to say sorry for the long wait. But as I said life happens and while it may take a while I will never abandon this story. Also, no Yassen yet but I do think I've found a way to introduce him more realistically so maybe sometime in the next couple of chapters. **

**Next order of business: Thanking all of you amazing readers and reviewers! So thank you: The Daughter of Artemis,authorwannabe101,magiccrazy101 (No, she won't react well AT ALL), Storage-Jar, 2whitie, ReillyScarecrowRocks, PartyPony2( This would be after Scorpia Rising *), Sajna18, Mrs. Frank Hardy, armygirl1234, Aestiva (One: This is not exactly an original plot so maybe you should take that up with the person who actually came up with 'reading the books' fics and two: while I try to make this as realistic as possible I do know that this is FANFICTION and that this is highly unlikely to ever happen. Maybe you should try not to take it so seriously as I think fan fiction should be a place for us to explore any scenario we want; no matter how unrealistic or 'overused'), SilverStar121,CHiKa-RoXy, Rider Rules,S122355,Q ( I did have them go to bed last chapter and now look their eating, yay! Seriously though I will try to break it up, especially when a certain visitor arrives... p.s. love the excitement!), WrITInGthroughDARKNESS, Banana Sultana, Books111(good point but I think that even if they are scared they realize that there are 6 other books..), hero of all, Hybrid Dragon-Wolf, S, EmiStone, loulouflowerpower, Randomperson96, and purrfus. I love reading all of your feedback! Also, thanks yo anyone who's even just bothering to read this!**

***For anyone who'd like to know the third picture in the last chapter was actually in Scorpia Rising. I actually looked in my book because I remembered that Alex and Jack took a picture in Egypt. **

**Disclaimer: What is making this unclear? Am I speaking another language without knowing it? Perhaps Parseltongue. I DON'T OWN ALEX RIDER!**

* * *

><p>The trio was once again gathered at Helen and John's house, Ian having decided to stay in the guest room for the duration of the readings. Ian and Helen had gone to work per usual,though not John as he was supposedly 'dead.' Their dinner devoured and the sun setting, they once again sat on the couch and John began to read.<p>

**"SO WHAT DO YOU SAY?"**

**ALEX OPENED HIS EYES. So he was still alive. That was a nice surprise.**

Helen released a relieved sigh.

**He was lying on a bed in a large, comfortable room. The bed was modern but the room was old,**

**with beams running across the ceiling, a stone fireplace, and narrow windows in an ornate wooden frame. He had seen rooms like this in books when he was studying Shakespeare. He would have said the building was Elizabethan. It had to be somewhere in the country. There was no sound of traffic. Outside he could see trees.**

**Someone had undressed him. His school uniform was gone. **

Ian wrinkled his nose. "Well, that's a little disturbing."

"Ian, we just started. Stop interrupting!"Helen glared. It didn't take much brain power for Ian to decide to shut his mouth.

**Instead he was wearing loose pajamas, silk from the feel of them. From the light outside he would have guessed it was midmorning. He found his watch lying on the table beside the bed and he reached out for it. The time was twelve o' clock. It had been around half past four when he had been shot with what must have been a**

**drugged dart. He had lost a whole night and half a day.**

"Where would MI6 have taken him?" John mused aloud.

Helen glared at him. "Maybe we'll find out if you keep reading." She said with a pointed look at the book in his hand.

**There was a bathroom leading off from the bedroom bright white tiles and a huge shower behind a**

**cylinder of glass and chrome. Alex stripped off the pajamas and stood for five minutes under a jet**

**of steaming water. He felt better after that.**

**He went back into the bedroom and opened the closet. Someone had been to his house in Chelsea.**

**All his clothes were here, neatly hung up.**

John frowned. "That means that whatever MI6 wants from him is long-term."

Ian was also frowning and Helen had a look of strong apprehension on her face.

"What could they possibly want with a school boy?" She fretted. Neither Ian nor John bothered to answer and their silence spoke in volumes. Alex wasn't just an ordinary schoolboy; he was one who was clever, trained in martial arts, and jumped out of windows for curiosity's sake. There was an awful feeling growing in the pit of her stomach that had nothing to do with pregnancy. She looked at John who cleared his throat and read on. The best way to find out what MI6 wanted was to keep going.

**He wondered what Crawley had told Jack. Presumably he** **would have made up some story to explain Alex's sudden disappearance.**

Helen looked doubtful. "How could you possibly explain that her 14 year old ward was taken by the bank?"

"Well, he is MI6." Ian said reasonably. "I'm sure he came up with something believable. And it's not like she could do anything anyway, the bank is legally responsible for Alex, not her."

**He took out a pair of Gap combat trousers, Nike sweatshirt and sneakers, got dressed, then sat on the bed and waited. About fifteen minutes later there was a knock and the door opened. A young Asian woman in a nurse's uniform came in, beaming.**

Helen scowled. As a nurse herself she saw nothing to beam about in the fact that a 14 year old boy had been kidnapped.

**"Oh you're awake. And dressed. How are you feeling? Not too groggy I hope. Please come this**

**way. Mr. Blunt is expecting you for lunch."**

John felt a surge of annoyance at the mention of his name. Usually he had no problem with the man. John could understand why the way he was, the spying business did that to people, but he was not okay with Blunt messing with his son.

**Alex hadn't spoken a word to her. He followed her out of the room, along a corridor and down a**

**flight of stairs. The house was indeed Elizabethan, with wooden panels along the corridors, ornate**

**chandeliers, and oil paintings of old bearded men in tunics and ruffs. The stairs led down into a tall**

**galleried room with a rug spread out over flagstones and a fireplace big enough to park a car in**. A

**long, polished wooden table had been set for three. Alan Blunt and a dark, rather masculine woman sucking a peppermint were already sitting down. **

**"Alex." Blunt smiled briefly, as if it was something he didn't enjoy doing. **

"He doesn't." Ian commented. "I don't think I've ever seen him actually smile." He shuttered. The thought was a little unnerving.

"**It's good of you to join us."**

John snorted. "Yeah. Because he actually had a choice in the matter."

**Alex sat down. "You didn't give me a lot of choice."**

"Aww. Like father like son." Ian teased. But Helen was beaming at the thought. "I think it's sweet." She said. John's face clearly said that sweet wasn't an adjective he didn't enjoy being described by. He figured he could let this one slide he thought with a small smile.

**"Yes. I don't quite know what Crawley was thinking of having you shot like that, but I suppose it**

**was the easiest way. May I introduce my colleague, Mrs. Jones."**

**The woman nodded at Alex. Her eyes seemed to examine him minutely but she said nothing.**

"Typical agent behavior. She must be his second in command but I don't think I know her." Ian remarked. John nodded. "Yeah. Neither do I."

**"Who are you?" Alex asked. "What do you want with me?"**

John tried to push away the dark thoughts telling him exactly what they probably wanted with Alex.

**"I'm sure you have a great many questions. But first let's eat."**

"Seriously? Let's eat? That's all he has to say for himself?" Helen looked as if she was ready to kick him where it hurts she wanted to know so desperately. That would be if this didn't occur in the future when she was already dead. Maybe she could have John introduce her to him in this time. Hmmm...

**Blunt must have pressed a hidden button, or else he was being overheard for-at that precise moment a door opened and a waiter in white jacket and black trousers appeared, carrying three plates. "I hope you like meat."**

**Blunt continued. "Today it's carre d' agneu."**

"Roast lamb." Ian translated for Helen.

**"You mean, roast lamb."**

"He speaks French?" Helen asked, impressed.

"Apparently." John said. He stared at Ian, slightly annoyed. Maybe if he'd given his son a more normal childhood MI6 would have left him alone. He stopped that train of thought. It would be hypocritcal to blame Ian when he himself hadn't been there for Alex at all.

"T**he chef is French."**

**Alex waited until the food had been served. Blunt and Mrs. Jones drank red wine. He stuck to**

**water.**

"You better have mister." Helen said with a terrifingly motherly look that plainly said she would not stand for any of this underage drinking nonsense.

**Finally Blunt began. "As I'm sure you've gathered." he said. "the Royal and General is not a bank. **

"No way! I thought all banks randomly kidnapped teenagers!" Helen exclaimed sarcastically.

**In fact, it doesn't exist... it's nothing more than a cover. And it follows of course that your uncle had nothing to do with banking. He worked for me. My name as, I told you at the funeral, is Blunt. I am the chief executive of the Special Operations Division of MI6. And your uncle was, for want of a better word,**

**a spy."**

John looked affronted. "Ian! How could you never tell me?" He said with a look of mock hurt. "Is it because you knew I'd be better at it than you?"

"You are not!" Ian yelled rather childishly as he threw a pillow at his brother who ducked.

**Alex couldn't help smiling. "You mean like James Bond."**

Helen smiled at the normal teenage response. Ian, on the other hand, looked offended.

"Excuse me? I'm way cooler than that guy."

John snorted. "Sure. If that makes you feel better. Though, since I'm better than you, what level does that put me at? Superman? Chuck Norris?"

"I don't know. Why don't you try jumping of a bridge to see if you can fly." Ian suggested unhelpfully. John growled but didn't press the subject. Instead, he continued reading.

"**Similar, although we don't go in for numbers. Double 0 and all the rest of it. Your uncle was a field**

**agent, highly trained and very courageous. He successfully completed assignments in Iran,**

**Washington, Hong Kong, and Havana to name but a few... I imagine this must come as a bit of a**

**shock for you."**

"Successful? That's shocking. I guess it must help to have me as a big brother." John said with a cocky grin. Ian just glared.

**Alex thought about the dead man, what he had known of him. **

They all winced in unison at another mention of Ian's death.

**His privacy. His long absences abroad. And the times he had come home injured... A bandaged arm one time. A bruised face another. Little accidents, Alex had been told. But now it all made sense. "I'm not shocked." he said.**

"I was." Helen stated, remembering John telling her about his job. Sure, she knew something was off but how many girls, sane girls, really suspect their boyfriends are spies?

**Blunt cut a neat slice off his meat. "Ian Rider's luck ran out, on his last mission he went on. He had been working undercover, here in England in Cornwall, and was driving back to London to make a report when he was killed-You saw his car at the yard."**

Helen winced. "He more than saw it. He was almost killed!" John rubbed her arm comfortingly before continuing.

**"Stryker and Son." Alex muttered. "Who are they?"**

"**Just people we use. We have budget restraints. We have to contract some of our work out. We**

**hired them to clean things up. Mrs. Jones here is our head of operations. It was she who gave your uncle his last assignment."**

And no matter how robotic she seemed things like that tend to stick with you for a lifetime, John thought. He would know. He'd killed enough people already; directly and indirectly.

**"We're very sorry to have lost him, Alex."**

"Yeah." Helen snorted. "But not because he was a human being, but because he was _useful_." While she knew her husband and his brother helped their country it didn't mean she had to like it. Eventually, their job would kill them all.

**The woman spoke for the first time. She didn't sound very sorry at all.**

A sort of distaste filled Helen's mouth.

**"Do you know who killed him?"**

This had them all leaning forward in anticipation.

"**Yes."**

**"Are you going to tell me?"**

**"No. Not now."**

They all groaned.

"We'll probably find out at some point." John said reasonably. "Alex is clever."

**"Why not?"**

**"Because you don't need to know. Not at this stage."**

While Helen herself wanted to know she couldn't help but think maybe not knowing would be best for Alex.

John, however, had another concern."What does she mean by this 'stage'?" Ian and Helen could only shrug in response.

**"All right." Alex considered what he did know. "My uncle was a spy. Thanks to you he's dead. I**

**found out too much so you knocked me out and brought me here. Where am I, by the way?"**

**"This is one of our training centers." Mrs. Jones said.**

"What does Alex need to be trained for?" Helen fretted.

"I'm sure it was just a secure place to bring him." John replied, wishing he could believe that.

**"You've brought me here because you don't want me to tell anyone what I know. Is that what this**

**is all about? Because if it is I'll sign the Official Secrets Act or whatever it is you want me to do, but then I'd like to go home.**

John had a bad feeling that wasn't happening any time soon.

**This is all crazy anyway. And I've had enough. I'm out of here."**

**Blunt coughed quietly. "It's not quite as easy as that." he said.**

"What?" Helen asked. "Of course it is! Let him go!" She said with a glare at the book.

**"Why not?"**

"Wouldn't we all like to know." Helen said, getting progressively more annoyed as the conversation continued.

**"It's certainly true that you did draw attention to yourself, both at the junkyard and then at our**

**offices on Liverpool Street. And it's also true that what you know and what I'm about to tell you**

**must go no further. But the fact of the matter is, Alex, that we need your help?"**

"Excuse me? MI6 needs the help of a 14 year old boy? What the hell is this?"

John kept reading, hoping to find the answer.

**"My help?"**

**"Yes." He paused. "Have you heard of a man called Herod Sayle?"**

"Who the hell is Herod Sayle and what does he have to do with anything?" Helen demanded of the book. Unfortunately, as books are inanimate objects, it was unable to answer.

John did instead. "I don't know. If we keep reading we'll probably find out." He said in the most soothing voice he could muster.

**Alex thought for a moment. "I've seen his name in the newspapers. He's something to do with**

**computers. And he owns racehorses. Doesn't he come from somewhere in Egypt?"**

**"Yes. From Cairo." Blunt took a sip of wine. "Let me tell you his story, Alex. I'm sure you'll find it of**

**interest."**

"I'm sure he won't." Helen argued.

"You know he can't hear you, right?" Ian asked.

He held his hands up in surrender at Helen's furious gaze.

**"Herod Sayle was born in complete poverty in the backstreets of Cairo. His father was a failed oral**

**hygienist. His mother took in washing. He had nine brothers and four sisters, all living together in**

**three small rooms along with the family goat. Young Herod never went to school and he should**

**have ended up unemployed, unable to read or write, like the rest of them.**

**But when he was seven something occurred that changed his life. He was walking down Fez**

**Street-in the middle of Cairo-when he happened to see an upright piano fall out of a fourteenth**

**story window-Apparently it was being moved and it somehow overturned. Anyway, there were a**

**couple of English tourists walking along the pavement underneath and they would both have been**

**crushed-no doubt about it except at the last minute Herod threw himself at them and pushed them**

**out of the way. The piano missed them by an inch.**

"Wow. I feel like that's something out of a bad cartoon." Ian interrupted.

"**Of course the tourists were enormously grateful to the young Egyptian waif and it now turned out that they were very rich. They made inquiries about him and discovered how poor he was... the**

**very clothes he was wearing had been passed down by all nine of his brothers. And so, out of**

**gratitude, they more or less adopted him. Flew him out of Cairo and put him into a school over**

**here where he made astonishing progress. He got excellent exam results, and here's an amazing**

**coincidence-at the age of fifteen he actually found himself sitting next to a boy who would grow up to become prime minister of Great Britain. Our present prime minister, in fact. The two of them**

**were at school together.**

"I'll move quickly forward.

"Thank you, this is a very long story." Helen grumbled, her patience was low today. John, however, was intrigued by the story, wondering why MI6 cared.

**After school Sayle went to Cambridge where he got a degree in economics. He then set out on a career that went from success to success. His own radio station, computer software and, yes, he even found time to buy a string of racehorses... although I believe they seldom win. But what drew him to our attention was his most recent invention.**

John read carefully, they were finally getting to the point of this entire story.

**A quite revolutionary computer that he calls the Stormbreaker."**

**Stormbreaker. Alex remembered the file he had found in Ian Rider's office. Things were beginning**

**to come together.**

Unfortunately, things were also becoming clear to John. But he didn't want to voice his suspicions.

**"The Stormbreaker is being manufactured by Sayle Enterprises." Mrs. Jones said. "There's been a lot of talk about the design."**

"**It has a black keyboard and black casing. With a lightning bolt going down the side." Alex said. He had seen a picture of it in PCReview. **

"Bit of a computer geek?" John questioned, sending Ian a look. Ian didn't seem to have a problem with his 'geekness' and refused to let John rile him up...again.

**"It doesn't only look different." Blunt cut in. "It's based on a completely new technology. It uses something called the round processor. I don't suppose that will mean anything to you."**

Helen and John both looked at Ian who shrugged. "Must be a future thing." He looked extremely curious.

**"It's an integrated circuit on a sphere of silicon about one millimeter in diameter." Alex said. "It's**

**ninety percent cheaper to produce than an ordinary chip because the whole thing is sealed in so**

**you don't need clean rooms for production."**

"Ian! You've corrupted my son!" John claimed. Ian gave him a look. "I know you secretly like computers, too. It must be genetics."

John hastily continued reading.

**"Oh... Yes." Blunt coughed. "I'm surprised you know so much about it."**

"Wow." Ian looked impressed. "I didn't think 'surprised' was in Blunt's dictionary. I'm so proud." He said, miming at wiping away a tear.

"Oh shush." Helen replied good naturedly.

**"It must be my age," Alex said.**

**"Well," Blunt continued, the point is, later today Sayle Enterprises are going to make a quite**

**remarkable announcement. They are planning to give away tens of thousands of these computers.**

"What? Thats crazy!"

**In fact, it is their intention to ensure that every secondary school in England gets its own**

**Stormbreaker. It's an unparalleled act of generosity, Sayle's way of thanking the country that gave**

**him a home."**

**"So the man's a hero."**

**"So it would seem. **

"He said 'seem'. What is really going on?" Helen asked.

The others could only shrug.

**He wrote to Downing Street a few months ago: My dear Prime Minister, You may remember me from our school days together. For almost forty years I have lived in England and I wish to make a gesture, something that will never be forgotten, to express my true feelings toward your country. The letter went on to describe the gift and was signed, Yours humbly, by the man himself. Of course, the whole government was excited. The computers are being assembled at the Sayle plant down in Port Tallon, Cornwall. They'll be shipped across the country at the end of this month, and on April first there's to be a special ceremony at the Science Museum in London.**

**The prime minister is going to press the button that will bring all the computers on line,the**

**whole lot of them. And-this is top secret by the way-Mr Sayle is to be rewarded with British citizenship, which is something he has apparently always wanted."**

**"Well, I'm very happy for him," Alex said. "But you still haven't told me what this has got to do with me."**

Helen nodded in agreement with her future son. "I'd like to know that as well. What was the point of that story?"

**Blunt glanced at Mrs. Jones, who had finished her meal while he was talking. She unwrapped**

**another peppermint and took over. "For some time now this department-Special Operations-has**

**been concerned about Mr. Sayle. The fact of the matter is we've been wondering if he isn't too**

**good to be true. I won't go into all the details, Alex, but we've been looking at his business**

**dealings-he has contacts in China and the former Soviet Union, countries that have never been our**

**friends. **

"That's all nice but what does this have to do with Alex?" Helen demanded for what felt like the millionth time.

**The government may think he's a saint but there's a ruthless side to him, too. And the security arrangements down at Port Tallon worry us. He's more or less formed his own private army. He's acting as if he's got something to hide."**

"Which means he probably does." Ian mummured.

**"Not that anyone will listen to us." Blunt muttered.**

**"Exactly. The government's too keen to get their hands on these computers to listen to us. That**

**was why we decided to send our own man down to the plant. Supposedly, to check on security. But, in fact his job was to keep an eye on Herod Sayle."**

**"You're talking about my uncle." Alex said. Ian Rider had told him that he was going to**

**an insurance convention. Another lie in a life that had been nothing but lies.**

"I'm sure he doesn't really mean that."Helen tried to assure Ian who had a pained look on his face."He's just hurt." She didn't look entirely convinced herself.

"And he has every right to be,"Ian replied quietly. "I'm the reason MI6 kidnapped him."

"Don't be so conceited." John said in a half-joking tone. "I'm sure it also had something to do with me, and the kid himself. So get off the pity train."

**"Yes. He was there for three weeks and like us he didn't exactly take to Mr. Sayle. In his first**

**reports he described him as short-tempered and unpleasant. But at the same time, he had to admit**

**that everything seemed to be fine. Production was on schedule. The Stormbreakers were coming**

**off the line. And everyone seemed to be happy.**

"Can they stop using the word 'seemed'? It's making me paranoid." Helen said in a worried tone.

**"But then we got a message. Rider couldn't say very much because it was an open line, but he told**

**us that something had happened. He said he'd discovered something. That the Stormbreakers**

**mustn't leave the plant and that he was coming up to London at once. He left Port Tallon at four**

**'o clock ...He never even got to the freeway. He was ambushed in a quiet country lane. The local**

**police found the car. We arranged for it to be brought up here."**

The room was eerily quiet as they read the details of Ian's death, all clinging to the hope that it wasn't true. It was a naïve hope, but it was all they had left.

**Alex sat in silence. He could imagine it. A twisting lane with the trees just in blossom. The silver**

**BMW gleaming as it raced past. And, around a corner, a second car waiting.**

The imagery gave Helen a distinctly nauseous feeling in her stomach.

"**Why are you telling me all this?" he asked.**

**"It proves what we were saying." Blunt replied. "We have our doubts about Sayle so we send a man down. Our best man.**

John whistled despite the tense atmosphere. "High praise."

**He finds out something and he ends up dead. Maybe Rider discovered the truth-"**

**"But I don't understand!" Alex interrupted. "Sayle is giving away the computers. He's not making**

**any money out of them. In return he's getting a medal and British citizenship. Fine-what's he got**

**to hide?"**

"It could be anything really." John mused. "And if it's not money he obviously has some other motive."

"No shit Sherlock." Ian brought him from his wonderings. Helen snorted.

**"We don't know." Blunt said. "We just don't know.**

"Wait. Please repeat that sentence. Blunt just admitted he didn't know something?" Ian asked in false wonderment. Well, not completely false.

**But we want to find out. And soon. Before these computers leave the plant."**

**"They're being shipped out on March thirty first." Mrs. Jones added. "Only three weeks from now."**

**She glanced at Blunt. He nodded. "That's why it's essential for us to send someone else to Port**

**Tallon. Someone to continue where your uncle left off."**

"They better not be implying my son should go." Helen said in a dangerous voice that clearly stated she found that idea more than unacceptable.

**Alex smiled queasily. "I hope you're not looking at me."**

"They better not be." Helen added in the same tone as before.

**"We can't just send in another agent." **

"What are you talking about? Of course you can!" Helen yelled. John, though his expression was stormy, thought it best to continue reading before she could endanger herself.

**Mrs. Jones said. "The enemy has shown his hand. He's killed Rider. **

John couldn't take it anymore. "So? You want to let them finish off the last one? Yeah. Why not go for the total extinction of the Riders?

He regretted speaking the moment he saw Helen's face. He swallowed and pulled her to him then continued reading the awful book.

**He'll be expecting a replacement. Somehow we have to trick him.**

"And you're too stupid to accomplish that with an ADULT agent? Or just too lazy?" Ian questioned, inscensed.

**"We have to send someone in who won't be noticed." Blunt continued. "Someone who can look**

**around and report back without being seen. We were considering sending down a woman.**

**She might be able to slip in as a cleaner or a kitchen helper.**

"See? Now that sounds much more reasonable." Helen said, her voice shaking slightly.

**But then I had a better idea.**

"You're better idea was to send in a 14 year old schoolboy? How the hell did he get to be head of MI6? Bribes?"Helen said sarcastically.

"By making the hard decisions." John answered quietly.

"Hard decisions? Bullshit. This decision didn't have to be made at all." Helen replied with a frightening glare.

**A few months ago one of these computer magazines ran a competition. 'Be the first boy or girl to**

**use the Stormbreaker'- Travel to Port Tallon and meet Herod Sayle himself. That was the first prize**

**and it was won by some young chap who's apparently a bit of a whiz kid when it comes to**

**computers. Name of Felix Lester. Fourteen years old. The same age as yourself.**

"That's nice. Have him do it." Helen said harshly. "Or, even better idea, send in an ACTUAL agent.I'm sure you have some lying around. That is, if you haven't already gotten them all killed by your total stupidity."

He looks a bit like you too. He's expected down at Port Tallon two weeks from now."

"Wait a minute-"

**"You've already shown yourself to be extraordinarily brave and resourceful." Blunt said.**

"Yes. And smart, which is why he'll say no Blunt." John interjected even though he knew that Blunt probably wouldn't let Alex refuse.

"**First at the junkyard...that was a karate kick, wasn't it? How long have you been learning karate?" Alex didn't answer so Blunt went on. And then there was that little test we arranged for you at the bank. Any boy who would climb out of a fifteenth floor window just to satisfy his own curiosity has to be rather special, and it seems to me that you are very special indeed."**

"Yes he is." Helen agreed. "And if you get him killed I will personally kill you. I don't care if this hasn't happened yet." She said with a savage stubborness.

No one pointed out that Blunt couldn't actually hear her threat.

**"What we're suggesting is that you come and work for us." Mrs Jones said. "We have enough time**

**to give you some basic training-not that you'll probably need it-and we can equip you with a few**

**items that may help you with what we have in mind. **

"No you won't." Helen argued. "Because he's not going." She crossed her arms as if to make clear her decision was final.

**Then we'll arrange for you to take the place of this other boy. We'll pack him off to Florida...or somewhere give him a holiday as a consolation prize. You'll go to Sayle Enterprises on March twenty ninth. That's when the Lester boy is expected. You'll stay there until April first, which is the day of the ceremony. **

"He will not." Helen repeated. John wished he could believe that.

**The timing couldn't be better. **

**You'll be able to meet Herod Sayle, keep an eye on him, tell us what you think. Perhaps you'll also**

**find out what it was that your uncle discovered and why he had to die for it. You shouldn't be**

**in any danger.**

"I beg to differ. If Ian died because of this there is no way it's safe." John pointed out the contradiction.

**After all, who would suspect a fourteen year-old boy of being a spy?"**

"No one. Because it's insane!" Ian exclaimed.

**"All we're asking you to do is to report back to us." Blunt said. "April first is just three weeks from**

**now. That's all we're asking. Three weeks of your time.**

John snorted. "They're asking a hell of a lot more than that. I don't care how special he is, you can't send a 14 year old boy into life threatening situations with barely any training!"

**A chance to make sure these computers are everything they're cracked up to be. A chance to serve your country."**

"Schoolboys shouldn't have to serve their country. He's not even old enough to get a job!" Ian said in angry exasperation.

**Blunt had finished his lunch. His plate was completely clean, as if there had never been any food on it at all. He put down his knife and fork, laying them precisely side by side. "All right, Alex," he said.**

**"So what do you say?"**

"He says no." Helen answered the book.

**There was a long pause.**

**Alex put down his own knife and fork. He hadn't eaten anything. Blunt was watching him with polite interest. Mrs. Jones was unwrapping yet another peppermint, her black eyes seemingly fixed on the twist of paper in her hands.**

"That's because she feels guilty. She if she's going to try and do this to a child she should at least have the decency to look him in the face." John said, disgust oozing from him.

**"No." Alex said.**

"Oh thank God." Helen breathed. "What a good boy."

**"I'm sorry?"**

"**It's a dumb idea. I don't want to be a spy. I want to play soccer. Anyway, I have a life of my own."**

They all smiled at his response. How many 14 year old boys would give up the chance to be like James Bond? Even if it was the smart thing to do.

**He found it difficult to choose the right words. The whole thing was so preposterous he almost**

**wanted to laugh. "Why don't you ask this Felix Lester to snoop around for you?"**

Helen looked surprised that he voiced her earlier question. Maybe he wasn't just like John...

**"We don't believe he'd be as resourceful as you." Blunt said.**

"Tough." John ground out.

**"He's probably better at computer games." Alex shook his head. "I'm sorry. I'm just not interested I don't want to get involved."**

**"That's a pity." Blunt said. "His tone of voice hadn't changed but there was a heavy, dead quality to**

**the words. And there was something different about him. Throughout the meal he had been polite-**

**not friendly but at least human. In an instant that had disappeared. Alex thought of a toilet chain**

**being pulled. The human part of him had just been flushed away.**

Ian shivered. "If it was even there in the first place."

**"We'd better move on then to discuss your future." he continued.**

"There's no way he's just letting that go."Helen said suspicously. John grimaced. "No. Probably not."

"Like it or not Alex the Royal and General is now your legal guardian."

"There's no way you can actually leave a child to a bank. Is there?" Helen asked.

"And I'm sure I wouldn't have done that." Ian added.

John shrugged. "They are MI6. I'm sure they found a way."

**"I thought you said the Royal and General didn't exist."**

**Blunt ignored him. "Ian Rider has, of course, left the house and all his money to you. However, he**

**left it in trust-until you are twenty one. And we control that trust. So there will, I'm afraid have to be some changes. The American girl who lives with you-"**

**"Jack?"**

**"Miss Starbright. Her visa has expired. She'll be returned to America.**

"He's blackmailing Alex." John spat.

"What kind of person blackmails a child?" Helen yelled, outraged.

"Someone who's already dead inside." Ian said grimly. "Someone who'll do whatever it takes."

**We propose to put the house on the market. Unfortunately, you have no relatives who would be prepared to look after you so I'm afraid that also means you'll have to leave Brookland. You'll be sent to an institution. **

**There' s one I know just outside Birmingham. The Saint Elizabeth in Sourbridge. Not a very pleasant place but I'm afraid there's no alternative." **

The trio continued to seethe and swear loudly; Ian and John in multiple languages and Helen in perfectly clear English.

**"You're blackmailing me!" Alex exclaimed.**

**"Not at all."**

"Yes you are. Just admit you're blackmailing a defenseless child you scumbag." Helen fumed.

**"But if I agreed to do what you asked...?"**

**Blunt glanced at Mrs. Jones."Help us and we'll help you." she said.**

Helen suggested something she wanted to 'helpfully' shove up Mrs. Jones'...

**Alex considered, but not for very long. He had no choice and he knew it. Not when these people**

**controlled his money, his present life, his entire future. "You talked about training," he said.**

Helen let out a despaired moan, knowing he'd already agreed.

Mrs. Jones nodded. "Felix Lester is expected at Port Tallon in two weeks," she said.

"They're going to send him with only two weeks of training?" Helen asked incredulously.

"Don't worry. I'm sure he'll be a natural."

"That doesn't help. At all."

"**That doesn't give us very much time. But it's also why we brought you here, Alex. This is a training center. If you agree to what we want, we can start at once."**

**"Start at once." Alex spoke, the three words without liking the sound of them. Blunt and Mrs. Jones**

**were waiting for his answer. He sighed. "Yeah. All right. It doesn't look like I've got very much**

**choice."**

"More like no choice at all." Ian grumbled.

**He glanced at the slices of cold lamb on his plate. Dead meat. Suddenly he knew how it felt**.

Helen ripped the book from John's hands. "I'm reading next."

* * *

><p><strong>I really hope it was worth the wait. Let me know your thoughts, A.K.A. REVIEW! Midterms are coming up so I'm not sure how long the next chapter will take but I will try to make it faster. Next:Double 0 Nothing<strong>


	6. Chapter 6

**Okay, um... I was kidnapped by Scorpia? No? I'm sorry for the long break, but I wasn't kidding when I said I would never abandon this,it just took me a while. Between school, gymnastics, choir and other stuff I've been really busy. My gymnastics season finished Sunday though( I'm the Prep opt advanced champion for my age group, woot woot! Yeah, I know I'm cool, just kidding. ) and I have my AP english exam tomorrow(eep!) so I'll hopefully have some more time. You can also blame this chapter on my discovering of A Game of Thrones, so much goodness!**

**I can't even begin to thank all of you who reviewed, making this my most reviewed story, but I'll try. So a huge thanks to: The Daughter of Artemis,Randomperson96, Phantom Lightning, Storage-Jar, SilverStar121,CHiKa-RoXy,ReillyScarecrowRocks,Phoenix Retribution,loulou flower power,Smoochynose, StrangelyPenned, double-oh-nothing, PartyPony2 (Yes, sarcasm does rock. It rocks my socks.), Banana Sultana,WrItnGthroughDarkness, ARFAN324,magicrazy101, , BlueberriesGoneBad,Fallenqueen2,starbuck2233, Lady cougar-Trombone (Hopefully the timeline is fine, I definitely looked it up beforehand but.. who knows?),Synchro lover,J'aime lire, Getsumen Kage no Mai, GracefulLikeAGazelle, ColorMyStarsYellow13,MsWolfProtector,brokenangelwings16,DarkAngel-N7(Thanks for the kick in the butt I needed. I take curses very seriously. ;))**

**Thanks for those who pointed out the problems with the bold/not bold. I took extra care this time so it should all be good. **

**Hopefully, this came out okay. I'm a bit rusty. **

**Disclaimer: Now I remember why I procrastinated so long. Having to tell you people over and over again that I DON'T OWN ALEX RIDER is frankly exhausting.**

* * *

><p><strong>DOUBLE 0 NOTHING<strong>

**FOR THE HUNDREDTH time, Alex cursed Alan Blunt, using language he hadn't even realized he**

**knew. **

"Alex!" Helen admonished reflexively, though she agreed with him.

**It was almost five o' clock in the evening, although it could have been five o' clock in the**

**morning; the sky had barely changed at all throughout the day. It was gray, cold, unforgiving.**

"Sounds like someone we know," Ian said.

**The rain was still falling, a thin drizzle that traveled horizontally in the wind, soaking through his**

**supposedly waterproof clothing, mixing with his sweat and his dirt, chilling him to the bone.**

**He unfolded his map and checked his position once again. He had to be close to the last RV of the**

**day-the last rendezvous point- but he could see nothing. He was standing on a narrow track made**

**up of loose gray pebbles that crunched under his combat boots when he walked. The track snaked**

**around the side of a mountain with a sheer drop to the right. He was somewhere in the Brecon**

**Beacons,and there should have been a view but it had been wiped out by the rain and the fading**

**light. A few trees twisted out of the side of the hill, with leaves as hard as thorns. Behind him,**

**below him, ahead of him, it was all the same. Nowhere Land.**

"_Nowhere man,please listen. You don't know what you're missing._.." Helen stopped her singing of the Beatles classic upon seeing the looks John and Ian were giving her.

**Alex hurt. The 22-pound bergen backpack that he had been forced to wear cut into his shoulders**

**and had rubbed blisters into his back. His right knee, where he had fallen earlier in the day,was no**

**longer bleeding but still stung. His shoulder was bruised and there was a gash along the side of his**

**neck. His camouflage outfit-he had swapped his Gap combat trousers for the real thing-fitted him**

**badly, cutting in between his legs and under his arms but hanging loose everywhere else. He was**

**close to exhaustion, he knew, almost too tired to know how much pain he was in.**

John also began to curse Blunt, figuring Alex couldn't possibly know the amount of swear words in foreign languages that he did and, therefore, had left some out.

**But for theglucose and caffeine tablets in his survival pack, he would have ground to a halt hours ago. He**

**knew that if he didn't find the RV soon he would be physically unable to continue. Then, he would**

**be thrown off the course, "Binned" as they called it. They would like that. Swallowing down**

**the taste of defeat, Alex folded the map and forced himself on.**

**It was his ninth- or maybe his tenth- day of training. Time had begun to dissolve into itself, as**

**shapeless as the rain.**

At these depressing thoughts Helen stopped reading with a horrified look on her face. "What are they doing to him?"

**After his lunch with Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones he had been moved out of the**

**manor house and into a crude wooden hut a few miles away. There were nine huts in total, each**

**equipped with four metal beds and four metal lockers. A fifth had been squeezed into one of them**

**to accommodate Alex. Two more huts, painted a different color, stood side by side. One of these**

**was a kitchen and mess hall. The other contained toilets, sinks, and showers with not a single hot**

**faucet in sight.**

Ian had a reminiscent look on his face. "Ah, Brecon Beacons. Good times."

Helen looked at him questioningly. "Really?"

"No." He deadpanned.

**On his first day there Alex had been introduced to his training officer, an incredibly fit, black**

**Sergeant. He was the sort of man who thought he'd seen everything. Until he saw Alex. **

John snorted. "That should bring him down a notch."

**And he had examined the new arrival for a long minute before he had spoken. "It's not my job to ask**

**questions," he had said. "But if it was I'd want to know what they're thinking of sending me**

** you have any idea where you are, boy? This isn't a holiday camp. This isn't**

**Disneyland." **

"Maybe not." John corrected himself.

"It's not like he was given much choice." Helen spat at the sergeant in the book angrily.

**He cut the word into its three syllables and spat them out. "I have you for twelve days**

**and they expect me to give you the sort of training that should take fourteen weeks. That's not just**

**mad. That's suicidal."**

"Yes, yes it is." Ian agreed.

**"I didn't ask to be here," Alex said.**

**Suddenly the sergeant was furious. "You don't speak to me unless I give you permission," he**

**shouted. "And when you speak to me you address me as sir. Do you understand?"**

"Bipolar." Ian said in a sort of sing-song voice.

**Yes, sir." Alex had already decided that the man was even worse than his geography teacher.**

**"There are five units operational here at the moment," the officer went on. "You'll join K Unit. We**

**don't use names. I have no name. You have no name. If anyone asks you what you're doing you**

**tell them nothing. Some of the men may be hard on you. Some of them may resent you being here.**

"No? You think? All of them will be totally cool with training with a 14 year old." Helen said sarcastically.

**That's too bad. You'll just have to live with it. And there's something else you need to know. I can**

**make allowances for you. You're a boy, not a man. But if you complain you'll be binned. If you cry,**

"Riders do not cry!" Ian insisted.

"Except that one time you..." John began slyly before Ian hit him upside the head.

**you'll be binned. If you can't keep up you'll be binned. Between you and me boy, this is a mistake**

**and I want to bin you."**

**After that, Alex joined K Unit. As the sergeant had predicted they weren't exactly overjoyed to see**

**him.**

**There were four of them. As Alex was soon to discover, the Special Operations Division of MI6 sent**

**its agents to the same training center used by the Special Air Service- the SAS. Much of the training**

**was based on SAS methods and this included the numbers and makeup of each team. So there**

**were four men, each with their own special skills. And one boy seemingly with none.**

"That's not true, Alex." Helen said reassuringly, as though Alex was sitting right next to her and in need of a boost in self-esteem.

**They were all in their mid-twenties, spread out over the bunks in companionable silence. Two of**

**them were smoking. One was dismantling and reassembling his gun- a 9 mm Browning High Power**

**pistol. Each of them had been given a code name: Wolf, Fox, Eagle, and Snake. From now on Alex**

**would be known as Cub. **

"As much as I hate to admit it, that's kinda cute." Ian said.

**The leader, Wolf, was the one with the gun. He was short and muscular**

**with square shoulders and black, close-cropped hair. He had a handsome face, made slightly**

**uneven by his nose, which had been broken at some time in the past.**

**He was the first to speak. Putting the gun down, he examined Alex with cold, dark brown eyes. "So**

**who the hell do you think you are?" he demanded.**

"**Cub," Alex replied.**

**" A bloody schoolboy!" Wolf spoke with a strange, slightly foreign accent. "I don't believe it. Are you**

**with Special Operations?"**

"Unfortunately."

**"I'm not allowed to tell you that." Alex went over to his bunk and sat down. The mattress felt as**

**solid as the frame. Despite the cold, there was only one blanket.**

Ian and John both grimaced.

**Wolf shook his head and smiled humorlessly. "Look what they've sent us," he muttered. "Double 0**

**Seven? Double Nothing's more like it."**

"Wow, really clever. Jackass. What kind of respectable soldier picks on kids?"

**After that, the name stuck. Double 0 Nothing was what they called him.**

**In the days that followed Alex shadowed the group, not quite part of it but never far away. Almost**

**everything they did, he did. He learned map reading, radio communication and first aid. He took**

**part in an unarmed combat class and was knocked to the ground so often that it took all his nerve**

**to persuade himself to get up again.**

John muttered something about who he was going to knock to the ground.

**And then there was the assault course. Five times he was shouted and bullied across the nightmare**

**of nets and ladders, tunnels and ditches, towering walls and swinging tightropes that stretched out**

**for almost a quarter of a mile, in and over the woodland beside the huts. Alex thought of it as the**

**adventure playground from hell.**

That received various snorts of laughter from the readers.

**The first time he tried it he fell off a rope and into a pit filled with**

**freezing slime. Half drowned and filthy, he had been sent back to the start by the sergeant.**

**Alex thought he would never get to the end, but the second time he finished it in twenty-five minutes,**

**which he had cut to seventeen minutes by the end of the week. Bruised and exhausted though he**

**was, he was quietly pleased with himself. Even Wolf only managed it in twelve.**

"Ha, take that you stupid bully." Helen smiled proudly.

**Wolf remained actively hostile toward Alex. The other three men simply ignored him, but Wolf did**

**everything to taunt or humiliate him. It was as if Alex had somehow insulted him by being placed in**

**the group. Once, crawling under the nets, Wolf lashed out with his foot, missing Alex's face by an**

**inch. **

"That's outrageous! I'm going to stick my foot up his-" John began.

Helen gave him a look.

"But of course violence isn't the answer...?" He finished uncertainly as though not quite sure what she wanted him to say.

She smirked. "Nah, I say go for it."

**Of course he would have said it was an accident if the boot had connected. Another time he**

**was more successful, tripping Alex up in the mess hall and sending him flying, along with his tray,**

**cutlery, and steaming plate of stew. And every time he spoke to Alex he used the same, sneering**

**tone of voice.**

**"Good night, Double 0 Nothing. Don't wet the bed."**

"He's 14 not 5. At this point I would say that you,with your shocking amount of immaturity, would be the more likely bed-wetter." John scoffed.

**Alex bit his lip and said nothing. But he was glad when the four men were sent off for a day's**

**jungle survival course- this wasn't part of his own training. Even though the sergeant worked him**

**twice as hard once they were gone, Alex preferred to be on his own.**

"I can't imagine why." Ian said, his voice heavily laced with sarcasm.

**But on the tenth day, Wolf did come close to finishing him altogether. It happened in the Killing**

**House.**

**The Killing House was a fake- a mock up of an embassy -used to train the SAS in the art of hostage**

**release. Alex had twice watched K Unit go into the house, the first time swinging down from the**

**roof, and had followed their progress on closed-circuit TV. All four men were armed, Alex himself**

**didn't take part because someone, somewhere had decided he shouldn't carry a gun.**

"Well, thank god for that at least," Helen said, trying to eject the image of her 14 year old son shooting a gun form her mind.

Ian bit his lip. "I don't know, that does give him less protection."

Helen looked at him, her eyes slightly wild. "But he's just doing surveillance, right? Easy stuff, remotely safe."

"You're probably right." Ian agreed, though she noticed he didn't fully answer her question.

**Inside the Killing House, mannequins had been arranged as terrorists and hostages. Smashing down the doors**

**and using stun grenades to clear the rooms with deafening, multiple, blasts, Wolf, Fox, Eagle and**

**Snake had successfully completed their mission both times.**

**This time Alex had joined them. The Killing House had been booby-trapped. They weren't told how.**

"Of course not. What would be the fun in that?"

"Shut up Ian."

"Shutting up."

**All five of them were unarmed. Their job was simply to get from one end of the house to the other**

**without being "killed."**

**They almost made it.**

"That doesn't sound good."

**In the first room, made up to look like a huge dining room, they found the**

**pressure pads under the carpet and the infrared beams across the doors. For Alex it was an eerie**

**experience, tiptoeing behind the other four men, watching as they dismantled the two devices,**

**using cigarette smoke to expose the otherwise invisible beam. It was strange to be afraid of**

**everything and yet to see nothing.**

Helen felt a sort of naseau in her stomach that told her fear would probably be a common theme in this book, for her and her son.

**In the hallway there was a motion detector, which would have activated a machine gun (Alex assumed it was loaded with blanks), behind a Japanese screen. The**

**third room was empty. The fourth was a living room with the exit, a pair of French windows, on the**

**other side. There was a trip wire, barely thicker than a human hair, running the entire width of the**

**room, and the French windows were alarmed. While Snake dealt with the alarm, Fox and Eagle**

**prepared to neutralize the trip wire, unclipping an electronic circuit board and a variety of**

**tools from their belts.**

Helen stopped reading to let out a snort of laughter. John and Ian gave her odd looks.

"Sorry, for some reason my mind automatically jumped to fanny pack." She let out a bout of laughter that the men bemusedly joined in.

**Wolf stopped them. "Leave it. We're out of here." At the same moment, Snake signaled.**

**He had deactivated the alarm. The French windows were open.**

**Snake was the first out. Then Fox and Eagle. Alex would have been the last to leave the room but**

**just as he reached the exit, he found Wolf blocking his way.**

"What the hell is he doing?" Ian asked.

"This guy has serious issues." Helen said as if that was all the explanation needed.

**"Tough luck, Double 0 Nothing," Wolf said. His voice was soft, almost kind.**

"There is nothing remotely kind about this guy. What he needs is anger management." John stated.

**The next thing Alex knew, the heel of Wolf's palm had rammed into his chest, pushing him back**

**with astonishing force. Taken by surprise he lost his balance, and fell, remembered the trip wire,**

**and tried to twist his body to avoid it. But it was hopeless. His flailing left hand caught the wire.**

**Dammit. This is child abuse!**

**He actually felt it against his wrist. He hit the floor, pulling the wire with him.**

**The trip wire activated a stun grenade- a small device filled with a mixture of magnesium powder**

**and mercury fulminate. The blast didn't just deafen Alex, it shuddered right through him as if trying**

**to rip out his heart.**

None of the people present even wanted to imagine Alex's heart being ripped out.

**The light from the ignited mercury burned for a full five seconds. It was so blinding that even closing his eyes made no difference. Alex lay there with his face against the hard,**

**wooden floor, his hands scrabbling against his head unable to move, waiting for it to end.**

They waited with baited breath, besides Helen who continued reading.

**But even then it wasn't over. When the flare finally died down, it was as if all the light in the room**

**had burned out with it. Alex stumbled to his feet, unable to see or hear, not even sure anymore**

**where he was. **

"When I get my hands around that sick bastard's neck-" John made violent motions with his hands as though strangling someone so Helen, though also furious, decided to continue reading before her husband murdered someone.

**He felt sick to his stomach. The room swayed around him. The heavy smell of chemicals hung in the air.**

**Ten minutes later he staggered out, into the open. Wolf was waiting for him with the others, his**

**face blank. He had slipped out before Alex hit the ground. **

"**Darn, I was really hoping he'd get caught in it. He deserves it. He should be binned."**

**The unit's training officer walked angrily over to him. Alex hadn't expected to see a shred of concern in the **

**man's face and he wasn't disappointed.**

**"Do you want to tell me what happened in there, Cub?" he demanded. When Alex didn't answer he**

**went on. "You ruined the exercise. **

"He ruined the exercise?" Helen asked incredulously.

**You fouled up. You could get the whole unit binned. So you'd**

**better start telling me what went wrong."**

"What's wrong is that someone let Wolf into camp." John said emphatically.

**Alex glanced at Wolf. Wolf looked the other way. What should he say? Should he even try to tell**

**the truth?**

"I guess it would be a bit hypocritical of me to try and say the truth is always best, considering my job." John said.

Helen narrowed her eyes at him. "Yes, yes it would."

"Okay, I get it. Just trying to instill some good moral values in my son." John held his hands up in defeat.

Ian smirked. "It's okay John. It's obvious that all Alex's good traits come from Helen."

John smacked him.

**"Well ?" The sergeant was waiting.**

**"Nothing happened, sir," Alex said. "I just wasn't looking where I was going. I stepped on something**

**and there was an explosion."**

John sighed. "Well, on the bright side he's not a tattletale."

**"If that was real life you'd be dead,"**

They all flinched.

**the sergeant said. "What did I tell you? Sending me a child was a mistake! **

"Well, at least we're in agreement on that." Helen nodded stubbornly.

**And a stupid, clumsy child who doesn't look where he's going, that's even worse."**

"But on that we're not." John growled. "My son is neither stupid nor clumsy. He's probably more intelligent than all your soldiers combined."

**Alex stood where he was. He knew he was blushing.**

Though this wasn't actually a good thing Helen couldn't help half-smiling at the thought of a miniature John with her eyes and a rosy blush across his cheeks.

**Half of him wanted to answer back but he bit his tongue. **

"Good, talking back to the sergeant never ends well." John knew from experience.

**Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Wolf half- smiling.**

They all scowled and John let out a low, almost-growl.

**The sergeant had seen it too. "You think it's so funny, Wolf? You can go clean up in there.**

"Justice." Ian hissed.

**And tonight you'd better get some rest. All of you. Because tomorrow you've got a thirty-mile hike. No**

**rations. No lighters. No fire. This is a survival course. And if you do survive then maybe you'll have**

**a reason to smile."**

"Well, that's going to suck."

**Alex remembered the words now, exactly twenty-four hours later. He had spent the last eleven of**

**them on his feet, following the trail that the sergeant had set out for him on the map. The exercise**

**had begun at six o' clock in the morning, after a gray-lit breakfast of sausages and beans. Wolf and**

**the others had disappeared into the distance ahead of him a long time ago, even though they had**

**been given 55 -pound backpacks to carry. They had also been given only eight hours to complete**

**the course. Allowing for his age, Alex had been given twelve.**

"That's still ridiculous. Especially since he's practically on his own out there!" Helen exclaimed.

**He rounded a corner, his feet scrunching on the gravel. There was someone standing ahead of him.**

**It was the sergeant. He had just lit a cigarette and Alex watched him slide the matches back into**

**his pocket. Seeing him there brought back the shame and the anger of the day before and at the**

**same time sapped the last of his strength. Suddenly, Alex had had enough of Blunt, Mrs. Jones,**

**Wolf... the whole stupid thing.**

"Wow, it took him that long? I had enough of them the second they started talking." John scowled.

**With a final effort he stumbled forward the last hundred yards and came to a halt. Rain and sweat trickled down the side of his face. His hair, dark now with grime, was glued across his forehead.**

**The sergeant looked at his watch. "Eleven hours, five minutes. That's not bad, Cub. But the others**

**were here three hours ago."**

"The others were grown men who volunteered to be here." Helen retorted.

**Bully for them, Alex thought. He didn't say anything.**

"**Anyway, you should just make it to the first RV," the sergeant went on. It's up there."**

**He pointed to a wall. Not a sloping wall. A sheer one. Solid rock, rising two or three hundred feet up**

**without a handhold or a foothold in sight. Even looking at it Alex felt his stomach shrink. Ian Rider**

Ian jerked at the sound of his name. Frowning a little at the fact that, even in his head, Alex felt the need to use his full name. What did that say about their relationship?

**had taken him climbing in Scotland, in France, all over Europe...But he had never attempted**

**anything as difficult as this. Not on his own. Not when he was so tired.**

Helen bit her lip worriedly before continuing.

**"I can't," he said.**

Ian flinched. "Not good word choice."

**In the end the two words came out easily.**

John thought he was frowning so much his face would begin to stay that way.

**"I didn't hear that," the sergeant said.**

**"I said, I can't do it, sir."**

"At least he's sticking with it." John muttered.

**"Can't isn't a word we use around here."**

**"I don't care. I've had enough. I've just had- " Alex's voice cracked. He didn't trust himself to go on.**

There was a somber silence as Helen read.

**He stood there, cold and empty, waiting for the ax to fall.**

**But it didn't. The sergeant gazed at him for a long minute. He nodded his head slowly. "Listen to**

**me, Cub," he said. "I know what happened in the Killing House."**

"What?" Helen demanded, outraged. "And he didn't do anything?"

**Alex glanced up.**

**"Wolf forgot about the closed-circuit TV. We've got it all on film."**

**"Then why-?" Alex began.**

**"Did you make a complaint against him, Cub?"**

**"No, sir."**

**"Do you want to make a complaint against him, Cub?"**

**A pause. Then... "No, sir."**

John gave a small smile. "He's tougher than he thinks."

**"Good." The sergeant pointed at the rock face, suggesting a path up with his finger. "It's not as**

**difficult as it looks," he said. "And they're waiting for you just over the top. You've got a nice cold**

**dinner. Survival rations. You don't want to miss that."**

"Yum," Helen agreed sarcastically.

**Alex drew a deep breath and started forward. As he passed the sergeant, he stumbled and put out**

**a hand to steady himself, brushing against him. "Sorry, sir," he said.**

**It took him twenty minutes to reach the top and sure enough K Unit was already there, crouching**

**around three small tents that they must have pitched earlier in the afternoon. Two just large**

**enough for sharing. One, the smallest, for Alex.**

"That's good. With these upstanding citizens you can never be quite sure which one is going to stab you in your sleep." Helen said, only half joking.

**Snake, a thin, fair-haired man who spoke with a Scottish accent, looked up at Alex. He had a tin of**

**cold stew in one hand, a teaspoon in the other. "I didn't think you'd make it," he said. Alex couldn't**

**help but notice a certain warmth in the man's voice. And for the first time he hadn't called him**

**Double 0 Nothing.**

John gave a grudging nod of approval.

**"Nor did I," Alex said.**

**Wolf was squatting over what he hoped would become a campfire, trying to get it started with two**

**flint stones while Fox and Eagle watched. He was getting nowhere. The stones only produced the**

**smallest of sparks and the scraps of newspaper and leaves that he had collected were already far**

**too wet. Wolf struck at the stones again and again. The others watched, their faces glum.**

**Alex held out the box of matches that he had pickpocketed from the sergeant**

**when he had pretended to stumble at the foot of the rock face.**

Ian and John began to laugh at Alex's antics but Helen glared at them. "You two are turning my son into some sort of criminal. You, with your stupid genetics and you, you probably taught him how to do that!" She said pointing to each John and Ian in turn.

Their faces turned serious. "Not a criminal- a spy." John said quietly.

Helen didn't have a response to that, and so continued.

"**These might help," he said. He threw the matches down, then went into his tent. **

Well, the attitude is definitely from you." John said to Helen, attempting to lighten the mood a bit. She glared, trying to look unamused.

* * *

><p><strong>CONGRATS, you have enough of an attention span to read to the bottom of this page! Joking aside, I'm hoping not to leave you guys hanging that long again. Please leave any comments you have, unless you're a hater, then, go away. :)<strong>

****Next Chapter: TOYS AREN'T US****


	7. Chapter 7

**Wow, okay it's been a really long time since I updated this. I'm really sorry, I did not expect to be that busy but between applying for colleges and taking three AP classes... Anyway, I finally figured a way to work on this during class so hopefully updates will be more regular, especially with all the breaks coming up. My last chapter was definitely not my best so I really tried to add more comments this time, and I'm hoping the final result is better. **

**Now, to thank all of my lovely reviewers: Dragon Silhouette, Lady Cougar-Trombone, Smoochynose,Wheel Then, Anonomon13, Rider Rules,youngjusticefanatic (Don't worry, it's not actually that much typing as I have all the text on my computer...just without any punctuation.),WrITInGthroughDARKNESS,Reyna Potter, MoonRiver93, SeeSea17, kage kitsune 14, LuvvAlexander,Strawberry, Demonicruler83,Biennia Baron (You make a good point, but usually these stories do it like that, and I usually like it that way. Something to consider, though.), and GreenDrkness. Thank you so much for all your comments and suggestions. **

**Disclaimer: I tried to get Scorpia to steal the rights to Alex Rider for me but, as usual, they failed. All the stuff in bold continues to belong to Anthony Horowitz. **

**Hopefully it's worth the wait... Read on!**

* * *

><p><strong>TOYS AREN'T US<strong>

**IN THE LONDON OFFICE, Mrs Jones sat waiting while Alan Blunt read the report. The sun was**

**shining. **

"That's surprising. I would've thought he walks around with his own personal thunderstorm," said Helen.

Ian snorted. "He's not some sort of cheesy movie villain."

Helen huffed loudly.

**A pigeon was strutting back and forth along the ledge outside as if it were keeping guard.**

"**He's doing very well," Blunt said, at last. "Remarkably well, in fact."**

"Of course he is, he's my son," John stated smugly.

"Whew, you might want to dial back the narcissism, otherwise your big head won't be able to fit through any doorways. It barely makes it as it is," Ian said, making faux-concerned gestures.

Helen laughed.

"Besides, the kid got half of his DNA from Helen and you don't hear her bragging."

John simply scowled at Ian until he continued reading.

**He turned a page. "I see he missed target practice."**

**"Were you planning to give him a gun?" Mrs Jones asked.**

"You better not have been! He's only 14 years old," Helen exclaimed, she then went on to suggest where Blunt could stick his gun in vivid detail.

**"No. I don't think that would be a good idea."**

Helen made a ridiculously surprised face. "Blunt said something right?

John and Ian raised their eyebrows at her in harmony.

"What?" She asked, defensively.

John shook his head.

"Nothing."

**"Then why does he need target practice?"**

**Blunt raised an eyebrow. "We can't give a teenager a gun," he said. **

"Just because they're not giving him one doesn't mean he may not have to use one," Ian answered for Blunt.

"He'd better not," Helen said, as though demanding the book respect her authority.

"**On the other hand, I don't think we can send him to Port Tallon empty-handed. You'd better have a word with Smithers."**

**"I already have. He's working on it now."**

**Mrs Jones stood up as if to leave. But at the door she hesitated. "I wonder if it's occurred to you**

**that Rider may have been preparing him for this all along?" she said.**

Helen glared at Ian and let out something that sounded suspiciously like a growl.

"My son is a human being, not just some sort of miniature James Bond, or you."

Ian held up his hands in surrender.

**"What do you mean?"**

**"Preparing Alex to replace him. Ever since the boy was old enough to walk, he's been being trained**

**for intelligence work but without knowing it. I mean he's lived abroad, so he now speaks French,**

**German, and Spanish. He's been mountain climbing, diving, and skiing. He's learned karate.**

**Physically he's in perfect shape." She shrugged. "I think Rider wanted Alex to become a spy."**

Ian shrugged.

"Just preparing him for the family business, I guess."

Helen looked as though ready to lunge at him but John restrained her.

"Aren't you glad now, if he did? Two weeks at Brecon Beacons is not going to get him out of this alive."

This only increased Helen's worry, but her desire to throttle Ian seemed to dissipate.

**"But not so soon," Blunt said.**

**" I agree. You know as well as I do, Alan- he's not ready yet. If we send him into Sayle Enterprises**

**he's going to get himself killed."**

Helen had a pained look on her face as she put a hand on her bloated stomach, as though reassuring herself that, at least for now, her son was safe.

"**Perhaps." The single word was cold, matter-of-fact.**

"If he does, I will personally come back from the grave and haunt you, Blunt," John threatened.

**"He's fourteen years old. We can't do it."**

"At least she has a semblance of a conscience. Though I'm sure it can be easily ignored," Helen remarked, and neither John nor Ian disagreed.

"**We have to." Blunt stood up and opened the window, letting in the air and the sound of the traffic.**

"You do not _have _to! _You _are making this decision. You are _choosing _to use my son in some kind of twisted experiment!" Helen shouted, incensed that Blunt was trying to shirk away from taking full responsibility.

**The pigeon hurled itself off the ledge, afraid of him. "This whole business worries me," he said.**

"Oh, it worries you, does it? What worries me is that a complete idiot like yourself is responsible for this country's safety!" Helen responded. Quite loudly, John noted as he temporarily lost hearing in his right ear.

"**The prime minister sees the Stormbreakers as a major coup...for himself and for his government. But there's still something about Herod Sayle that I don't like. Did you tell the boy about Yassen**

**Gregorovich?"**

Despite his being a spy, John could not keep the emotions off his face as they flitted from shock, to worry, to something that made him look distinctly nauseous.

"What is it?" Ian asked quietly.

John shook his head as though that would forcibly wrench the emotions free of his face.

"I trained him," he replied, voice at equal volume.

Ian's face flashed with understanding and Helen's with dawning comprehension of where John had probably met Yassen Gregorovich.

**"No." Mrs Jones shook her head.**

**"Then it's time you did. It was Yassen who killed his uncle. I'm sure of it. And if Yassen**

**was working for Sayle..."**

Aside from the words being read aloud, the room was completely silent.

**" What will you do if Yassen kills Alex Rider?"**

Put in such a harsh manner, it seemed so real and imminent. Her baby, not even born yet, might die in this book, Helen thought.

**"That's not our problem, Mrs Jones.**

"Not your problem?" John asked, angrily.

**If the boy gets himself killed, at least it will be the final proof that there is something wrong. At the very least it'll allow me to postpone the Stormbreaker project and take a good hard look at what's going on at Port Tallon. In a way, it would almost help us if he was killed."**

By the end of Blunt's sentence, all three of Alex's relatives were angry to the point of being apoplectic.

Helen was yelling barely-coherent insults about Blunt's mother, Ian was glaring at the wall as though it was the source of all his problems, and John, seemingly unsure of what to do with his anger, picked up a rather ugly vase and chucked it across the room where it shattered on the hardwood.

John was heaving as though he'd run a mile, but, at Helen and Ian's shocked stares, he sat down stiffly.

He did not enjoy being helpless.

**"The boy's not ready yet. He'll make mistakes. It won't take them long to find out who he is." Mrs**

**Jones sighed. "I don't think Alex has got much chance at all."**

"Of course he does," Ian said quietly, as though trying to convince himself.

**"I agree." Blunt turned back from the window. The sun slanted over his shoulder. A single shadow**

**fell across his face. But it's too late to worry about that now," he said. "We have no more time.**

**Stop the training now. Send him in."**

Helen tried to take deep, slow breaths, grasping John's hand tightly enough to cut off circulation.

**Alex sat hunched up in the back of the low-flying C-130 military aircraft, his stomach churning**

**behind his knees. There were eleven men sitting in two lines around him. His own unit and two**

**others. For an hour now, the plane had been flying at just three hundred feet, following the Welsh**

**valleys, dipping and swerving to avoid the mountain peaks.**

"Wait, what are they doing? Are they letting my 14-year-old son jump out of an airplane?" Helen demanded.

"Er... maybe they're just sightseeing?" Ian suggested nervously, and was quickly silenced by Helen's not-so-amused glare.

**A single bulb glowed red behind a wire mesh, adding to the heat in the cramped cabin. Alex could feel the engines vibrating through him.**

**It was like traveling in a spin dryer and microwave oven combined.**

"Yeah..." John trailed off.

Ian snorted. "He's definitely related to Helen."

"What does that mean?"

He gulped. "He...um...got your creativity?"

She smiled wolfishly.

"Yup, and, believe me, it's not restricted to arts and crafts."

Ian looked slightly terrified at the number of imaginative scenarios she could use against him.

**The thought of jumping out of a plane with an oversize silk umbrella would have made Alex sick**

**with fear-but only that morning he'd been told that he wouldn't, in fact, be jumping. **

"Thank God for that," Helen breathed out.

**A message from London. They couldn't risk him breaking a leg, it said, and Alex guessed that the end of his training was near. Even so, he'd been taught how to pack a parachute, how to control it, how to exit a plane, and how to land. And at the end of the day the sergeant had instructed him to join the flight-just for the experience. Now, close to the drop zone, Alex felt almost disappointed.**

Helen gave John a cowering look.

"What?" He asked, confused.

"He doesn't get this want to do completely dangerous things from me."

"She's right. Even the woman you married is dangerous," Ian added. "And very lovely," he quickly continued as she turned towards him.

**He'd watch everyone else jump and then he'd be left alone.**

**" P minus five..."**

**The voice of the pilot came over the speaker system, distant and metallic. Alex gritted his teeth. Five minutes until the jump. He looked at the other men, shuffling into position, checking the cords that connected them to the static line. He was sitting next to Wolf.**

"How does it feel to be more immature than a 14-year-old?" Ian questioned book-Wolf, obviously thinking of 'double-oh-nothing'."

"I don't know, Ian, why don't you enlighten us?" John asked, mockingly.

Ian scowled and pointedly itched his face with his middle finger.

**To his surprise, the man was completely quiet, unmoving. It was hard to tell in the half darkness, but the look on his face could almost have been fear.**

"he should be afraid. I'm going to find him and punch him in the face so hard he won't remember his own name." Came a rather aggressive threat, surprisingly, or maybe not, coming from Helen.

John gave her a hesitant look before saying, "Um... since this book is from the future, he's probably a minor right now. You probably don't want to get arrested for assaulting a kid..."

He trailed off as Helen gave him an annoyed look for ruining her fantasy.

"It's preemptive justice," she muttered, but let it go.

**There was a loud buzz and the red light turned green. The assistant pilot had climbed through from**

**the cockpit. He reached for a handle and pulled open a door set in the back of the aircraft, allowing the cold air to rush in. Alex could see a single square of night. It was raining. The rain howled past. The green light began to flash. The assistant pilot tapped the first pair on their shoulders and Alex watched them shuffle over to the side and then throw themselves out. For a moment they were there, frozen in the doorway. Then they were gone like a photograph crumpled and spun away by the wind. Two more men followed. Then another two. Wolf would be the last to leave and-with Alex not jumping he would be on his own.**

"Serves him right. Besides, who would want to go with such a bas-"

Helen was cut off as Ian read over her.

**It took less than a minute. Suddenly Alex was aware that only he and Wolf were left.**

**"Move it!" the assistant pilot shouted above the roar of the engines.**

**Wolf picked himself up. His eyes briefly met Alex's and, in that moment, Alex knew Wolf was a**

**popular leader. He was tough and he was fast completing a thirty-mile-hike as if it were just a stroll in a park. But he had a weak spot. **

"Yes, he enjoys picking on innocent children," Helen interjected.

**Somehow he'd allowed this parachute jump to get to him and he was too scared to move.**

"If he doesn't jump he's gonna get binned," Ian stated, not sounding particularly sorry about that fact.

**It was hard to believe, but there he was, frozen in the doorway, his arms rigid, staring out. Alex glanced back. The assistant pilot was looking the other way. He hadn't seen what was happening. And when he did? If Wolf failed to make the jump it would be the end of his training and maybe even the end of his career. Even hesitating would be bad enough. He'd be binned.**

"Yes, we know. Let's skip to that part," helen said spitefully.

John rolled his eyes, he knew that Helen was not as angry at Wolf as she seemed. He was simply a good target for all her frustration. That didn't mean she probably would not have a few choice words for him if they ever met...

**Alex thought for a moment. Wolf hadn't moved. Alex could see his shoulders rising and falling as he tried to summon up the courage to go. Ten seconds had passed. Maybe more. The assistant pilot was leaning down, stowing away a piece of equipment. Alex stood up. "Wolf," he said.**

Helen felt some of her anger drain away from her. Ales may have many skills coveted by MI6 but what she saw as more important was that he was a genuinely good person. Why else would he want to help someone who had done nothing but belittle him? She could only hope that, whatever happened, that wouldn't change. That MI6 wouldn't steal away his personality, his compassion. Even in John, there was a certain coldness that came with living in secrets, she didn't want it to infect her son.

**Wolf didn't hear him.**

**Alex took one last quick look at the assistant Pilot, then kicked out with all his strength. His foot**

**slammed into Wolf's backside. **

John and Ian let out barks of surprised laughter and Helen, not as shocked, smiled. She may be angry, but that hadn't blinded her to what was right. She just applauded Alex for finding a way to make kicking someone's ass out of a plane the right thing to do. That was real skill.

**He'd put all his strength behind it. Wolf was caught by surprise his**

**hands coming free as he plunged into the swirling night air.**

**The assistant pilot turned around and saw Alex. "What are you doing?" he shouted.**

"**Just stretching my legs," Alex shouted back.**

**The plane curved in the air and began the journey home.**

**Mrs. Jones was waiting for him when he walked into the hangar. **

They all scowled.

**She was sitting at a table, wearing a gray silk jacket and trousers with a black handkerchief flowing out of her top pocket. For a moment she didn't recognize him.**

"What? Why?" Helen asked, the brothers shrugged in answer.

**Alex was dressed in a flying suit. His hair was damp from the rain. His face was pinched with tiredness, and he seemed to have grown older over the past two weeks. **

"Oh," Helen whispered dejectedly.

Was she going to have to sit here and listen as her son grew more and more tired, and as he acquired that look in his eyes: the one that would never really go away, the one that said he would never again be able to fully relax, to laugh, to trust... She shook her head. She was being overly pessimistic. It was only going to be one time, and it was just simple surveillance, right? Even she knew that she didn't really believe that.

**None of the men had arrived back yet. A truck had been sent to collect them from a field about two miles away.**

**"Alex..." she said.**

**Alex looked at her but said nothing.**

**"It was my decision to stop you from jumping," she said. "I hope you're not disappointed. I just**

**thought it was too much of a risk. Please. Sit down."**

**Alex sat down opposite her.**

**"I have something that might cheer you up," she went on. "I've brought you some toys."**

"He doesn't need toys, he needs to be able to protect himself," John argued. He couldn't help but think that if Alex was anything like him, finding trouble would not be a problem.

**"I'm too old for toys," Alex said.**

Ian laughed knowingly. "You're never too old for..."

He didn't finish as Helen looked as though she was trying to somehow protect her unborn child from his inappropriateness.

**"Not these toys."**

**She signaled and a man appeared, walking out of the shadows, carrying a tray of equipment that**

**he set down on the table. The man was enormously fat. When he sat down the metal chair**

**disappeared beneath the spread of his buttocks, and Alex was surprised it could even take his**

**weight. **

"Don't be rude, Alex," Helen scolded.

"He's simply making an observation, Helen," John defended. "It's not like he said it out loud. Besides, it's Smithers," he continued as though that explained everything.

**He was bald with a black mustache and several chins, each one melting into the next and**

**finally into his neck and shoulders. He wore a pinstriped suit, which must have used enough**

**material to make a tent.**

**" Smithers," he said, nodding at Alex. "Very nice to meet you, old chap."**

"Under the circumstances, I would think not so much," John commented, dryly.

**"What have you got for him?" Mrs Jones demanded.**

Helen humphed at her attitude while John asked with slight desperation, "Does it really have to be sos soon? He was only there for ten days." He knew the answer from the Heads' previous conversation but couldn't help but hope.

**"I'm afraid we haven't had a great deal of time, Mrs J.," Smithers replied. **

Ian snorted at his use of a nickname with one of the coldest women in Britain.

"**The challenge was to think what a fourteen-year-old might carry with him arid-adapt it." He picked the first object off the tray. A yo-yo. It was slightly larger than normal, black plastic.**

"**Let's start with this," Smithers said.**

**Alex shook his head. He couldn't believe any of this. "Don't tell me," he exclaimed. "it's some sort of secret weapon..."**

"Exploding yo-yo!" Ian exclaimed, in actual excitement, unlike Alex. He never got any cool gadgets.

**" Not exactly. I was told you weren't to have weapons. You're too young."**

"Too young for weapons but not too young to spy for you. It's nice to see you people know where to draw the line," Helen said, sarcastically.

**"So it's not really a hand grenade? Pull the string and run like hell?"**

It was John's turn to snort. "He gets that from you," he said to Helen.

She nodded seriously. "Who knew that 'awesome' was genetic?"

John chuckled. "I assumed it wasn't the first time Ian tripped up the stairs."

Ian looked highly affronted. "Hey, I didn't trip, you pushed me!"

"And you didn't dodge," came John's reply.

**"Certainly not. It's a yo-yo." Smithers pulled out the string, holding it between a pudgy finger and**

**thumb. "However, the string is a special sort of nylon. Very advanced. There's thirty yards of it, and it can lift weights of up to two hundred pounds. The actual yoyo is motorized and clips onto your belt. Very useful for climbing."**

**"Amazing." Alex was unimpressed.**

As were the three readers. "They're sending my son into a dangerous unknown with nothing but a yo-yo with super string?" Helen asked, with angry, incredulity.

"**And then there's this." Mr Smithers produced a small tube. Alex read the side. ZITCLEAN:**

**FOR HEALTHIER SKIN. **

"Hey, if he's inherited my skin it's more than fine," John protested.

"You should probably get off your high horse before someone pushes you off," Ian muttered.

"It's not bragging if it's true," John retorted, childishly.

"John, your turning into Wolf. How does it feel to be more immature than a 14-year-old?" Ian asked him, repeating the earlier question.

"**Nothing personal," Smithers went on apologetically. "But we thought it was something a boy of your age might carry. And it is rather remarkable." He opened the tube and squeezed some of the cream onto his finger. "Completely harmless when you touch it. But bring it into contact with metal and it's quite another story." He wiped his finger, smearing the cream onto the surface of the table. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a wisp of acrid smoke twisted upward in the air, the metal sizzled, and a jagged hole appeared. **

John looked thoughtful. "Well, not much of a weapon but it could be useful."

"**It'll do that to just about any metal," Smithers explained. "Very useful if you need to break through a lock. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his finger clean. **

"**Anything else?" Mrs Jones asked. **

The three readers were interested, and slightly anxious to know. These little gadgets could end up saving Alex's life...

"**Oh yes, Mrs J. You could say this is our piece de resistance." He picked up a brightly colored box**

**that Alex recognized at once as a Nintendo Color Game Boy. **

"A what?" Ian asked.

John shrugged. "Must be a future thing."

"**What teenager would be complete without one of these?" he asked. "This one comes with four games. And the beauty of it is, each cartridge turns the computer into something quite different."**

**He showed Alex the first game. Nemesis. "If you insert this one the computer becomes a**

**fax/photocopier, which gives you direct contact with us and vice versa. Just pass the screen across**

**any page you want to transmit and we'll have it in seconds."**

Helen let out a slight breath of relief. "So as long as nothing goes wrong, he'll be able to contact MI6."

Not that they seemed to be overly worried. Helen tried to stop thinking about the inevitable question of if they would actually show up to save him, and if in time...

**He produced a second game: Exocet. "This one turns the computer into an X-ray device. Place the**

**machine against any solid surface less than two inches thick and watch the screen. It has an audio**

**function too. You just have to plug in the earphones. Useful for eavesdropping. It's not as powerful**

**as I'd like, but we're working on it."**

Ian still looked slightly miffed that he never got any interesting gadgets for missions. "Some of us have to eavesdrop the old-fashioned way."

John rolled his eyes. "I think we should focus on the fact that, despite this handy device, there is always a good chance he will get caught. And then he will have no gun, unlike you do on missions."

That shut Ian up.

**The third game was called Speed Wars. "This one's a bug finder," Smithers explained. "You can use**

**the computer to sweep a room and check if somebody's trying to listen in on you. I suggest you**

**use it the moment you arrive. And finally my own favorite..." Smithers held up a final cartridge. It was labeled BOMBER BOY.**

**"Do I get to play this one?" Alex asked.**

**"You can play all four of them. They all have a built in games function. But as the name might**

**suggest, this is actually a smoke bomb. This time the cartridge doesn't go into the machine. You**

**leave it somewhere in a room and press START three times on the console, and the bomb will be**

**set off by remote control. Useful camouflage if you need to escape in a hurry."**

"That's something at least," John admitted, grudgingly.

**"Thank you, Smithers," Mrs Jones said.**

**"My pleasure, Mrs J." Smithers stood up, his legs straining to take the huge weight. "I'll hope to see**

**you again, Alex. I've never had to equip a boy before. I'm sure I'll be able to think up a whole host**

**of quite delightful ideas."**

Helen scowled. "You can keep your ideas to yourself. This is only happening one time. He's a child, not a spy," She asserted stubbornly.

**He waddled off and disappeared through a door that clanged shut behind him.**

**Mrs Jones turned to Alex. "You leave tomorrow for Port Tallon," she said. "You'll be going under the**

**name of Felix Lester. She handed him an envelope. The real Felix Lester left for Florida yesterday.**

**You'll find everything you need to know about him in here."**

**"I'll read it in bed."**

"I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not,"

**"Good." Suddenly she was serious and Alex found himself wondering if she was herself a mother. **

**If so,**

"If so," Helen interrupted. "It makes this all-the-more deplorable."

"I think she does, actually," John offered.

Helen crossed her arms. "I'm sure she would never let her child do this, so why is it okay when it's mine?"

Neither of the men had an answer to this.

**she could well have a son his age. She took out a black-and-white photograph and laid it on**

**the table. It showed a man in a white T-shirt and jeans. He was in his late twenties with light**

**close cropped hair a smooth face-the body of a dancer.**

"He probably wouldn't appreciate being described like that," Ian noted, guessing at who the photo depicted.

**The photograph was slightly blurred. It had been Zen, from a distance possibly with a hidden camera. "I want you to look at this," she said.**

**"I'm looking."**

Ian smiled lightly at the similarities between Alex and John. They were both scarily calm in scary situations and had a way of answering that gave you the feeling they were secretly laughing at you.

**"His name is Yassen Gregorovich. He was born in Russia, but he now works for many countries.**

**Iraq has employed him. Also Serbia, Libya, and China."**

**"What does he do?" Alex asked. **

John's hand clenched in a sort of spasm.

**"He's a contract killer, Alex. We believe it was he who killed Ian Rider."**

"And I taught him how to do it," John said quietly. Ian looked as though about to reply, but thought better of it. If John was going to feel guilty about something there was nothing he could say to change his mind. He was stubborn that way.

**There was a long pause. Alex had almost managed to persuade himself that this whole business**

**was just some sort of crazy adventure...a game. **

Just like Helen had tried to convince herself that this insane mission would simply be surveillance... not so dangerous...

**But looking at the cold face with its blank, hooded eyes he felt something stirring inside him, and knew it was fear. He remembered his uncle's car, shattered by bullets. A man like this, a contract killer, would do the same to him. He wouldn't even blink.**

Helen put her hand of her mouth and bit back a sob, quite literally, as she clamped her teeth down on her tongue. She hoped that the physical pain would distract her from the emotional, but it didn't appear to be working.

**"This photograph was taken six months ago, in Cuba." Mrs Jones was saying. "It may have been a**

**coincidence, but Herod Sayle was there at the same time. The two of them may have met. And**

**there is something else." She paused. "Rider used a code in the last message he sent. A single**

**letter. Y."**

**"Y for Yassen."**

"And I for If my son dies I will kill you in the most excruciating way possible."

Neither of the brothers had the heart to remind her that, by the time these events took place, she would already be long dead.

**"He must have seen Yassen somewhere in Port Tallon. He wanted us to know."**

**"Why are you telling me this now?" Alex asked. His mouth had gone dry.**

**"Because if you see him, if Yassen is anywhere near Sayle Enterprises, I want you to contact us at**

**once."**

**"And then?"**

**"We'll pull you out. It doesn't matter how old you are, Alex. If Yassen finds out you're working for**

**us, he'll kill you too."**

A gripping fear clenched at John's heart. And it would be all his fault, he knew. He would be, once again, helpless.

**She took the photograph back. Alex stood up.**

**"You'll leave here tomorrow morning at eight o' clock," Mrs Jones said. "Be careful, Alex. And good luck."**

**Alex walked across the hangar, his footsteps echoing. Behind him, Mrs Jones unwrapped a**

**peppermint and slipped it into her mouth. Her breath always smelled faintly of mint. As head of**

**Special Operations, how many men had she sent to their deaths? Ian Rider and maybe dozens**

**more. Perhaps it was easier for her if her breath was sweet.**

Considering it, John thought that was a pretty good theory. He felt a short moment of panic as he realized that she had done it to his little brother and now it was his son's life hanging in the balance.

**There was a movement ahead of him and he saw that the parachutists had gotten back from their**

**jump. They were walking toward him out of the darkness with Wolf and the other men from K Unit**

**right at the front. Alex tried to step around them, but he found Wolf blocking his way.**

"Oh not this again." Helen rolled her eyes, exasperated.

**"You're leaving," Wolf said. Somehow, he must have heard that Alex's training was over.**

**"Yes."**

**There was a long pause. "What happened on the plane..." he began.**

**"Forget it, Wolf," Alex said. "Nothing happened. You jumped and I didn't. That's all."**

Helen smiled: modesty. She wasn't entirely sure where he got that from.

**Wolf held out a hand. "I want you to know... I was wrong about you... You're all right. And maybe**

**one day it would be good to work with you."**

"That 'one day' had better be very far in the future and come of Alex's volition, if at all." Helen said, narrowing her eyes.

**"You never know," Alex said.**

**They shook.**

**" Good luck, Cub."**

**"Good-bye, Wolf."**

**Alex walked out into the night.**

Helen felt emotionally drained already and knew, though adept at hiding it, the others were feeling the same. Despite this, she offered to read the next chapter. Now, that they hadn't gotten this far, she would not be able to sleep without knowing what happened to her son.

* * *

><p><strong>Whew, well it feels good to have that finally done. I feel like this story focuses a lot on Helen so I'm John finally got a freak out moment. Some of this turned out more emotional than I thought it was gonna be... Anyway, I'd love to know what you thought, so REVIEW! The next chapter is Physalia Physalia.<strong>


	8. Chapter 8

**I have a confession to make: I've literally had most of this chapter done for months I was just too lazy to finish it. So finally, here it is. I'm sorry it took so long, but I was stupid enough to take 3 AP classes and so I have a ton of work. I also can't pick between two colleges so it's slightly stressful Anyway, enough excuses. I would like to thank all my lovely reviewers from last chapter: Lady Cougar-Trombone, SellTheeSoul4Bacon,SeeSea17, JoJo0515, tanis19, LegacyofBlood,RBR, devial549,SlytherinToTheCore, and GreenDrkness.**

* * *

><p><strong>SAYLE ENTERPRISES<strong>

**Strictly Private**

John cleared his throat and began reading the chapter.

**"Trespassers will be shot," Alex muttered to himself.**

Helen's breathing became somewhat labored. "But he's just a kid. They wouldn't..." She trailed off as though afraid of the answer.

"I don't think they have an age requirement for that,"Ian replied grimly.

**He remembered what Mrs. Jones had told him. "He's more or less formed his own private army. He's acting as if he's got something to hide."**

**Well, that was certainly his own first impression. The whole complex was somehow shocking, alien to the sloping hills and fields.**

"Yeah, a private army will have an easy time of keeping people out, and also keeping, say, undercover 14 year-olds, in." John assessed, looking distinctly worried.

**The car reached the main gate where there was a security cabin, and an electronic barrier. A guard in a blue-and-gray uniform with SE printed on his jacket waved them through. The barrier lifted automatically. And then they were following a long, straight road over a stretch of land that had somehow been hammered flat with an airstrip on one side and a cluster of four high tech buildings on the other. The buildings were large, smoked glass, and steel, each one joined to the next by a covered walkway. There were two aircraft next to the landing strip. A helicopter and a small cargoplane. Alex was impressed. The whole complex must have been a couple of miles square. It was quite an operation.**

_That kind of operation has ways of dealing with intruders. _John thought. He did not, however, say this aloud because Helen would probably go into stress-induced labor. And then she would take the baby and run off to some remote island so this could never happen. Better not risk it.

**The Mercedes came to a roundabout with a fountain at the center, swept around it, and continued**

**up toward a fantastic sprawling house. It was Victorian redbrick, topped with copper domes and**

**spires that had long ago turned green. There must have been at least a hundred windows on five**

**floors facing the drive. It was a house that just didn't know when to stop.**

"Compensating much?" Ian snorted. Helen chuckle; but John remained silent, still stuck in dark thoughts.

**The Mercedes pulled up in the front and the driver got out. "Follow me."**

**"What about my luggage?" Alex asked.**

**"It'll be brought."**

"And thoroughly searched," John added.

"None of those gadgets will give him away, right?" Helen asked, looking beseechingly at John.

"MI6 wouldn't let him get caught by something so easy and predictable," John assured her.

He refrained from mentioning that it hadn't helped Ian much.

That wouldn't happen to his son.

Couldn't.

Unbidden, an image of a boy with his features and Helen's deep brown eyes came to his mind. A slow motion video of a bullet tearing through that boy's chest and him crumpling to the ground.

All because his father couldn't protect him.

All because his father had failed.

**Alex and the driver went through the front door and into a hall dominated by a huge canvas-**

**judgment Day, the end of the world painted four centuries ago as a swirling mass of doomed souls**

**and demons. **

Helen felt nauseous. Maybe it was a sign. It wasn't the end of the world, but maybe it was the end of her world. She would be dead and the only thing she left behind, the most important thing: her son, was going to die.

**There were artworks everywhere. Watercolors, and oils prints, drawings, sculptures in stone, and bronze all crowded together with nowhere for the eye to rest. Alex followed the driver along a carpet so thick that he almost bounced. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic and he was relieved when they passed through a door and into a vast, cathedral-like room that was practically bare.**

**"Mr Sayle will be here shortly," the driver said and left.**

**Alex looked around him. This was a modern room with a curving steel desk near the center, carefully positioned halogen lights, and a spiral staircase leading down from a perfect circle cut in**

**the ceiling about fifteen feet high. One entire wall was covered with a single sheet of glass and,**

**walking over to it, Alex realized that he was looking at a gigantic aquarium. The sheer size of the**

**thing drew him toward it. It was hard to imagine how many thousands of gallons of water the glass held back, but he was surprised to see that the tank was empty. There were no fish, although it was big enough to hold a shark.**

"I'm surprised it's not filled with piranhas. That would fit in better with the whole villain-cliche," Helen remarked. John simply rolled his eyes.

**And then something moved in the turquoise shadows and Alex gasped with a mixture of horror and wonderment as the biggest jellyfish he had ever seen drifted into view. The main body of the**

**creature was a shimmering, pulsating mass of white and mauve, shaped roughly like a cone.**

**Beneath it a mass of tentacles, covered with circular stingers, twisted in the water, at least ten feet long. As the jellyfish moved, or drifted in the artificial current, its tentacles writhed against the glass so that it looked almost as if it was trying to break out. It was the single most awesome and repulsive thing Alex had ever seen."**

Helen swallowed. "I take it back. How about they put a nice dolphin in the tank. Dolphins don't sting people. Also, they can balance beach balls on their noses. Always cool. Or wait, is that seals?"

"We get your point. You'd like an aquatic animal that doesn't have the possibility of being life-threatening in the tank," Ian said in a placating manner.

**"Physalia physalia." The voice came from behind him and Alex twisted around to see a man coming**

**down the last of the stairs.**

**Herod Sayle was short. He was so short that Alex's first impression was that he was looking at a**

**reflection that had somehow been distorted. In his immaculate and expensive black suit with gold**

**signet ring and brightly polished black shoes, he looked like a scaled down model of a**

**multimillionaire businessman. **

"Well, clearly he has realized he will never be physically intimidating and so he bought people to be manly for him," Ian remarked.

"Actually, not a bad plan," he added.

John shot him a look.

"Yeah, except the part where he gets those guys to shoot people."

That shut Ian up rather quickly.

**His skin was dark and his teeth flashed when he smiled. He had a**

**round, bald head and very horrible eyes. The gray pupils were too small, surrounded on all sides by white. Alex was reminded of tadpoles before they hatch. When Sayle stood next to him, the eyes were at the same level as his and held less warmth than the jellyfish.**

**"The Portuguese man-of-war," Sayle continued. He had a heavy accent brought with him from the**

**Cairo marketplace. "It's beautiful, don't you think?"**

"No. I do not think that potentially-harmful animals that are being kept near my son are beautiful," Helen disagreed.

**" wouldn't keep one as a pet," Alex said.**

"That's because you're not a madman with an inferiority complex, darling."

John almost laughed at the way his wife seemed to have forgotten that, while Alex was technically in the room, he was still in the womb and, therefore, could not understand her.

**"I came upon this one when I was diving in the South China Sea." Sayle gestured at a glass display**

**case and Alex noticed three harpoon guns and a collection of knives resting in velvet slots.**

"Great. More weapons," Helen said. "The guards with guns wasn't enough."

"**I love to kill fish," Sayle went on. "But when I saw this specimen of Physalia physalia, I knew I had to capture it and keep it. You see, it reminds me of myself."**

"He just compared himself to an animal that can kill you. I think that's enough of a hint. Clearly, he's 's all done. Alex can leave and tell MI6. Emphasis on leave."

Ian took his turn rolling his eyes. "I think they want a bit more evidence than that."

**"It's ninety-nine percent water. It has no brain, no guts, and no anus." **

All three of them burst out laughing.

"Clearly," John gasped. "He's got Helen's tact."

The person in question slapped him on the arm but did not disagree.

**Alex had dredged up the facts from somewhere and spoken them before he knew what he was doing.**

**Sayle glanced briefly at him, then turned back to the creature hovering over him in its tank. "It's an outsider," he said. "It drifts on its own, ignored by the other fish. It is silent, and yet it demands**

**respect. You see the nematocysts, Mr. Lester? The stinging cells? If you were to find yourself**

**wrapped in there, it would be an unforgettable death."**

"Wonderful, now he's talking about death. Clearly he's a creepy-ass villain who's going to murder my son with an anus-less fish.! Mission accomplished, time to go now." Helen spoke as if she wanted to reach inside the book and forcibly drag Alex away.

"I still don't think MI6 will take 'he owned a big fish' as definitive evidence," Ian snorted.

"I don't see why not. It sounds perfectly reasonable to me." Helen retorted stubbornly.

John coughed discreetly at her use of the word 'reasonable.'

Not discreetly enough, however, as Helen glared at him with the brown eyes their son would inherit.

**"Call me Alex," Alex said.**

John took in a sharp breath as his stomach clenched. This was just one reason why children, no matter how brilliant, shouldn't be spies...

**He'd meant to say Felix, but somehow it had slipped out. It was the most stupid, the most**

**amateurish mistake he could have made. But he had been thrown by the way Sayle had appeared**

**and by the slow, hypnotic dance of the jellyfish. The gray eyes squirmed.**

The room was tense with silence as all three of its occupants realized quite how bad things could turn very soon.

"**I thought your name was Felix?"**

**"My friends call me Alex."**

**"Why?"**

**"After Alex Ferguson. He's the manager of my favorite soccer team." It was the first thing Alex**

**could think of. But he'd seen a soccer poster in Felix Lester's bedroom and knew that at least he'd**

**chosen the right team. "Manchester United," he added.**

"Whew, okay guys. I think we're good for now. Alex clearly inherited my quick thinking," Helen said in a lighter tone now the immediate danger seemed passed, flipping her hair in an exaggerated preening motion.

"That's funny because I explicitly remember your response to that doctor walking in on us that one time being 'Uh... This isn't what it looks like. We were having an allergic reaction to our clothing,'" John stated smugly.

Helen flushed red as Ian burst out laughing, slapping the floor with his fist.

**Sayle smiled. "That's most amusing. Alex it shall be. And I hope we will be friends, Alex. You are a**

**very lucky boy. You won the competition and you are going to be the first teenager to try out my**

**Stormbreaker. But this is also lucky. I think for me. I want to know what you think of it! I want you to tell me what you like... what you don't." **

"Yeah, I don't know if I would be mentioning computer glitches to a maniac with a homicidal fish," Ian remarked.

**The eyes dipped away and suddenly he was ****businesslike. "We have only three days until the launch," he said. "We'd better get a bliddy move on, as my father used to say. I'll have my man take you to our room and tomorrow morning, first thing, you must get to work. There's a math program... you should try also languages. All the software was developed here at Sayle Enterprises. Of course, we've talked to children. We've gone to teachers, to education experts. But you, my dear Alex. You will be worth more to me than all of**

**them put together."**

"He's worth more than you and your entire enterprise put together. So if you or your bloody jellyfish touch one hair on his head I will cross back as a ghost to personally make your life a living hell," Helen threatened.

John nodded. "Well put."

**As he had talked, Sayle had become more and more animated, carried away by his own**

**enthusiasm. He had become a completely different man. Alex had to admit at he'd taken an**

**immediate dislike to Herod Sayle.**

"Welcome to the club!" Ian grinned.

**No wonder Blunt and the people at M16 had mistrusted him! But now he was forced to think again. He was standing opposite one of the richest men in England, a man who had decided out of the goodness of his heart to give a huge gift to English schools. **

"Yeah, I'm still not sold on his goodness. Just because something seems great doesn't mean it is. People have ulterior motives," John said darkly.

"Well, thank you Mr. Cynicism," Helen muttered. "However, I have to agree. I'm not done being suspicious of this guy.

**Just because he was small and slimy, that didn't necessarily make him an enemy.**

"While I applaud the open-mindedness, honey, I'm 99.99% sure he's an enemy.

**Perhaps Blunt was wrong after all.**

**"Ah! Here's my man now." Sayle said. "And about bloody time!"**

**The door had opened, and a man had come in dressed in the black suit and tails of an old-**

**fashioned butler. **

"He did it!" Helen exclaimed, causing both brothers to look at her bemusedly.

"What? Isn't it always the butler?"

John rolled his eyes, which was starting to feel like a rather common occurrence.

"I think you've been watching too many crime dramas."

"I think you haven't been watching enough."

John smiled but didn't say anything.

It was hard to enjoy crime dramas when your whole life was one. One without the guaranteed happy ending.

**He was as tall and thin as his master was short and round, with a thatch of close-**

**cropped ginger hair on top of a face that was so pale it was almost paper white. From a distance it**

**had looked as if he was smiling, but as he drew closer Alex gasped. The man had two horrendous**

**scars, one on each side of his mouth, twisting up all the way to his ears. It was as if someone had**

**at some time attempted to cut his face in half. The scars were a gruesome shade of mauve. There**

**were smaller, fainter scars where at one time his cheeks had been stitched.**

"Not to sound prejudiced, but that guy's totally an evil henchman," Helen inputted.

"While that does sound kind of bad, I'm inclined to agree," Ian said with a shrug of the shoulders.

**"This is Mr. Grin," Sayle said. "He changed his name after his accident."**

**"Accident?" Alex found it hard not to stare at the terrible wound.**

"Alex, he hasn't actually tried to kill you yet so it's still rude to stare," Helen scolded.

"**Mr Grin used to work in a circus. It was a novelty knife throwing act. For the climax he used to**

**catch a spinning knife between his teeth. But then one night his elderly mother came to see the**

**show. She waved to him from the front row and he got his timing wrong. He's worked for me now**

**for a dozen years and, although his appearance may be displeasing, he is loyal and efficient.**

"Efficient at murdering beautiful 14 year old boys?" Helen asked fearfully, grasping John's forearm tightly.

**Don't try to talk to him, by the way. He has no tongue."**

**"Eeeurgh!" Mr Grin said.**

"Lovely," Helen interrupted sarcastically.

**"Nice to meet you," Alex muttered.**

"Oh good, he has some manners. Not like you two," She added pointedly.

"What did we do?" Ian was suddenly defensive.

"A man picked up the wallet you dropped and John punched him."

"He was using that as a pretense to get close to us! He wasn't some good samaritan."

"Still, would it have killed you to say 'thank you'?"

"Most likely..." John muttered, but too quietly for his wife to hear.

**"Take him to the blue room," Sayle commanded. He turned to Alex. "You're fortunate that one of**

**our nicest rooms has come up free- here in the house. We had a security man staying there. But he left us quite suddenly."**

The reminder of Ian's death was heavy upon the room. The fact that Alex would be staying in the same place his uncle had before he died,sleeping in the same bed, sent shivers through Helen's spine.

**"Oh? Why was that?" Alex asked casually.**

**"I have no idea. One moment he was here, the next he was gone." Sayle smiled again."I hope you**

**won't do the same, Alex."**

"Back off with the subtle threats," Helen's tone was annoyed.

"That wasn't really that subtle, because Alex knows he's dead. Maybe he's trying to gauge his reaction, see if Alex knows what really happened to Ian," John thought aloud.

"Or maybe he's just a creep who gets a kick out of scaring minors," Helen argued.

"That's another solid possibility," John assented.

**" Thi... wurgh!" Mr Grin gestured at the door and, leaving Herod Sayle standing in front of his huge**

**captive, Alex left the room.**

**He was led back along a passage, past more works of art, up a staircase, and then along a wide**

**corridor with thick wood-paneled doors and chandeliers. Alex assumed that the main house was**

**used for entertaining. **

"Yeah, he, Kronos, and Satan have poker games there every Thursday."

John rolled his eyes at Helen's sarcasm.

**Sayle himself must live here. But the computers would be constructed in the**

**modern buildings he had seen opposite the he would be taken there tomorrow.**

**His room was at the far end. It was a large room with a four-poster bed and a window looking out**

**onto the fountain. Darkness had fallen, and the water cascading ten feet into the air over a semi-**

**naked statue, that looked remarkably like Herod Sayle, was eerily illuminated by a dozen concealed lights.**

"Ew, that's creepy," Helen remarked.

"Dude, nobody wants to see your porn," Ian added.

Helen snorted loudly.

**Next to the window was a table with an evening meal already laid out for him: ham, cheese,**

**salad. His luggage was lying on the bed.**

**He went over to his case-a Nike sports bag-and examined it. When he had closed it up, he had**

**inserted three hairs into the zip, trapping them in the metal teeth. They were no longer there. **

"Smart." Ian's tone was approving.

John felt something odd in the pit of his stomach and it took him a few seconds to identify it as pride. His son was clever, maybe he'd make it through this.

**Alex opened the case and went through it. Everything was exactly as it had been when he had packed,**

**but he was certain that the sports bag had been expertly and methodically searched.**

**He took out the Color Game Boy, inserted the Speed Wars cartridge, and pressed the start button.**

**At once the screen lit up with a green rectangle, the same shape as the room. He lifted the Game**

**Boy up and swung it around him, following the line of the walls. A red flashing dot suddenly**

**appeared on the screen. He walked forward, holding the Game Boy in front of him.**

**The dot flashed faster, more intensely. He had reached a picture hanging next to the bathroom, a**

**squiggle of colors that looked suspiciously like a Picasso. He put the Game Boy down and, being**

**careful not to make a sound, lifted the canvas off the wall. The bug was taped behind it, a black**

**disk about the size of a dime. **

"Wow, that's freaking cool." Helen exclaimed.

"Some of us still have to check for bugs the old-fashioned way," Ian grumbled.

"Jealous much? We all know how great you are at making sure there are no bugs in the room," John emphasized the last part as though reffering to a specific experience.

"That was one time!" Ian shot back defensively.

John shrugged nonchalantly. "Whatever you say, buddy."

**Alex looked at it for a minute wondering. Why it was there? Security,**

**or was Sayle such a control freak that he had to know what his guests were doing every minute of**

**the day and night?**

"He's paranoid about anyone finding his super-secret stash of comic books," Ian mocked.

**Alex lifted the picture and gently lowered it back into place. There was only one bug in the room.**

**The bathroom was clean.**

**He ate his dinner, showered, and went to bed. As he passed the window, he noticed activity in the**

**grounds near the fountains. There were lights coming out of the modern buildings. Three men, all**

**dressed in white overalls, were driving toward the house in an open-top jeep. Two more men**

**walked past. These were security guards, dressed in the same uniforms as the men at the gate**

**They were both carrying semiautomatic machine guns. Not just a private army but a well-armed**

**one.**

At this point, Helen didn't know how she was capable of worrying any more. However, every time a detail like this was read, she felt more worry rise in her. She was beginning to drown in it. She put a hand on her bulging stomach. Maybe she wasn't a superspy but she knew that if she was alive she wouldn't let this happen. No matter what she had to do.

**He got into bed. The last person who had slept here had been his uncle, Ian Rider. Had he seen**

**something, looking out of the window? Had he heard something? What could have happened that**

**meant he had to die?**

John desperately wanted to know the events leading to his brother's death. Not like this, however. Not at the possible loss of his son's life. He could live with his paining curiosity for the rest of his life, though that was not an especially long time, if his son could be safe. Maybe even have- dare he think it?- a normal life. Normalcy, though, seemed to be an unattainable dream for the Riders.

**Sleep took a long time coming to the dead man's bed.**

Silence pervaded in the room for a long while. Each person consumed with their own thoughts.

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><p><strong>I know I don't deserve it after making you wait so long but please review! Also, If you're reading my Harry Potter story, Totally Improbable, I'm hoping to get another chapter up for that soon.<strong>


	9. Chapter 9

**Wow, I updated. Nobody die of shock. I think at this point you all know I procrastinate, I've had most of this done for months I just never finished it. Anyway, I figured I'd update now because tomorrow I'm going to be starting college and hopefully I'll actually be busy with the whole human-interaction thing. So that means I probably won't update until around Thanksgiving when I'll be back if I don't update for a while that does not mean I've abandoned this story as, though I'm a ****wicked procrastinator, I will finish it eventually.****  
><strong>

**Anyway, I would like to thank: SarahOlivier,FallenQueen2,TiffRedd1994,Lady Cougar-Trombone,ShadowBeast21441,LegacyofBlood, Sajna18 (I have thought of bringing Yassen in but at this point it's a bit too complicated),SeeSea18,tanis19,soulessbody269, A Light in the Night,tiger1lily(Hmm.. Alex would be an interesting addition),PlatinumOwl (Sorry I made you wait, but at least I got passed the cursed chapter),Luvwrites (thanks for the offer, I may have to take you up on that),and Rebel99 for all of your awesome reviews!**

**Disclaimer: If Scorpia never forgets why do I have to keep saying that I do not own Alex Rider?**

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><p>LOOKING FOR TROUBLE<p>

**ALEX SAW IT the moment he opened his eyes. It would have been obvious to anyone who slept in the bed but, of course, nobody had slept there since Ian Rider had been killed. It was a triangle of white slipped into a fold in the canopy above the four-poster bed. You had to be lying on your back to see it- like Alex was now.**

**It was out of his reach. He had to balance a chair on the mattress and then stand on the chair to reach it. Wobbling, almost falling, he finally managed to trap it between his fingers and pull it out.**

**It was a square of paper, folded twice. Someone had drawn on it, a strange design: with what looked like a reference number beneath it.**

**There wasn't very much of it, but Alex recognized Ian Rider's handwriting. What did it mean? He pulled on some clothes, went over to the table, and took out a sheet of plain paper. Quickly, he wrote a brief message in block capitals:**

**FOUND THIS IN IAN RIDER'S ROOM.**

**CAN YOU MAKE ANY SENSE OF IT?**

**Then he found his Game Boy, inserted the Nemesis cartridge into the back, turned it on, and passed the screen over the two sheets of paper, scanning first his message and then the design.**

**Instantaneously, he knew a machine would have clicked on in Mrs. Jones's office in London and a copy of the two pages would have scrolled out of the back. Maybe she could work it out. She was, after all, meant to work for Intelligence.**

"Yes, but intelligence is clearly a misnomer. They should instead be called

The Bureau of People Dumb Enough to Send a 14-Year-Old Boy After a Homicidal Maniac." Helen snarked.

"Well, first of all, that name is definitely too long. It's impractical. And what are you gonna abbreviate it as? The BPDES14YOBAHM? It just sounds ridiculous. Secondly, I wouldn't exactly call the idea dumb, as it is certainly something no one would expect…" John trailed off at the piercing look Helen was giving him.

Jesus, it was like she was attempting to peel his skin away with her eyes.

"But also it's extremely dumb." He tacked on.

Helen rolled her eyes at the obvious backtracking but lessened her glaring, nonetheless.

That's when Ian felt compelled, for reasons unknown even to any possible god in existence.

"We don't know that he's a homicidal maniac. He could just be a regular maniac who people tend to die around."

"Yeah, I don't really find that comforting as, either way, people die," Helen answered tersely.

"That includes you," She added in a much softer voice, as if whispering the eventuality would make it easier to erase. As though she could simply ignore it out of existence. This had an immediate sobering effect on Ian, the grin slipping off his face.

**Finally, Alex turned off the machine, then removed the back and hid the folded paper in the battery compartment. The diagram had to be important. Ian Rider had hidden it. Maybe it was what had cost him his life.**

**There was a knock at the door. Alex went over and opened it. Mr. Grin was standing outside, still**

**wearing his butler costume.**

"**Good morning," Alex said.**

"**Geurgh!" Mr. Grin gestured and Alex followed him back down the corridor and out of the house. He**

**felt relieved to be out in the air, away from all the oppressive artworks. As they paused in front of the fountains there was a sudden roar and a propeller-driven cargo plane dipped down over the roof of the house and landed on the runway.**

"**If gring gy," Mr. Grin explained.**

"**Just what I thought," Alex said.**

John snorted loudly. It fascinated him: Alex's personality. Passing vague wonderings, John hadn't really pondered what Alex would be like as a person. He'd been too focused on the present, on keeping his wife and unborn child safe, to think that far ahead. Despite not having been raised by them, Alex shared startling similarities with he and his wife. The sarcasm was all Helen. He had to repress a smile imagining Alex interacting with his mother. They would constantly be trying to outwit each other as John watched, rolling his eyes at the pair of them. His fantasy slowly dissipated, the desire to smile going with it. That curiosity Alex had came from him, and all it was going to do was bring him trouble. The kind no one, let alone a kid, was prepared for. That was what he'd passed down to his son: a life of questions. One day one of those questions would get him killed. Maybe that day was soon in approaching.

**They reached the first of the modern buildings and Mr. Grin pressed his hand against a glass plate next to the door. There was a green glow as his fingerprints were read; and, a moment later, the door slid soundlessly open.**

**Everything was different on the other side of the door. From the art and elegance of the main house, Alex could have stepped into the next century. **

**Long white corridors with metallic floors.**

**Halogen lights. The unnatural chill of air-conditioning. Another world.**

**A woman was waiting for them, broad-shouldered and severe, her blond hair twisted into the tightest of buns. She had a strangely blank, moon-shaped face, wire-framed spectacles, and no makeup apart from a smear of yellow lipstick. She wore a white coat with a nametag pinned to the top pocket. It read: VOLE.**

"**You must be Felix," she said. "Or is it now, I understand, Alex? Yes. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Fraulein Vole." She had a thick German accent. "You may call me Nadia." She glanced at Mr. Grin. "I will take him from here."**

"I don't think I should even have to point out that she's clearly an evil henchman- henchwoman? Anyway, I mean who the hell introduces themselves as Fraulein?" Helen was gesticulating wildly as she attempted to establish this clear and very logical, to her, point. Ian and John blinked at her as though unsure whether she had reached a new level of sarcasm they couldn't understand or was actually serious.

"Um…German women?" Ian ventured.

"No German woman I've ever met."

"Have you ever even talked to a German woman?" John inquired; quite sure the answer was negative.

"No, that's exactly my point."

"What?"

"What!"

"What!?"

"Okay, just shut up you two!"

**Mr. Grin nodded and left the building.**

"**This way." Vole began to walk. "We have four blocks here. Block A, where we are now, is administration and recreation. Block B is software development. Block C is research and storage.**

**Block D is where the main Stormbreaker assembly line is found."**

"**Where's breakfast?" Alex asked.**

"Yes. He's a growing boy; he needs food," Ian imitated Helen's mothering voice. Helen, however, looked unperturbed.

Instead of retorting she asked: "You know, I never got that. Why are teenage boys the only ones given a free pass to stuff their face? I mean they don't have a monopoly on eating!"

"No they do not. I'd say that belongs to pregnant women," John replied, thinking of the amount their grocery costs had gone up in the past months. Helen rolled her brown eyes and shoved his arm.

"Ouch," he said, rubbing it.

"Oh, please. I know that didn't hurt you, Mr. Spy."

"It hurts my heart, Helen," He said, hanging his head dramatically. "You know, in some circles that's called Spousal Abuse."

"I'll show you 'Spousal Abuse.' Couch-" She patted the arm of the sad piece of furniture. "Meet John. You're going to become very well acquainted if he doesn't shut his mouth." Her voice was a sickly sweet thing, the look taking ahold of her face devious.

Thinking it wise not to speak, John held up his hands placatingly; and zipped his lips, shooting a death glare at Ian who was roaring with laughter.

"**You have not eaten? I will send you a sandwich. Herr Sayle is very keen for you to begin at once with the experience."**

**She walked like a soldier-straight back, her feet in tight black leather shoes, rapping against the floor. Alex followed her through another door and into a bare square room with a chair and a desk and, on the desk, the first Stormbreaker he had ever seen.**

**It was a beautiful machine. iMac might have been the first computer with a real sense of design, but the Stormbreaker had far surpassed it. It was black apart from the white lightning bolt down the side and the screen could have been a porthole into outer space. Alex sat behind the desk and turned it on. The computer booted itself instantly. A second fork of animated lightning sliced across the screen; there was a swirl of clouds and then in burning, red the letters SE, the logo of Sayle**

**Enterprises. Seconds later, the desktop appeared with icons for math, science, French-every subject ready for access. Even in those brief seconds, Alex could feel the speed and the power of the computer. And Herod Sayle was going to put one in every school in the country! He had to admire the man. It was an incredible gift.**

"Yeah… perhaps too incredible a gift."

"**I leave you here," Fraulein Vole said. "It is better for you, I think, to explore the Stormbreaker on your own. Tonight you will have dinner with Herr Sayle and you will tell him your feeling."**

"**Yeah- I'll tell him my feeling."**

"Geez, there's a sarcastic undercurrent to everything he says… sounds like someone I know." John's blue eyes looked on Helen, causing her to smirk. The left side of her mouth quirking up in a motion he found endearing, not that he would admit it.

"You know you love it," her voice was smug.

She gave John a quick kiss on the cheek, and it was Ian's turn to roll his eyes.

"Hey lovebirds, if you're done do you mind if we keep finding out what will happen to _your _son?"

"Just because women can't stand to be around you for more than 30 secondsdoesn't mean you have to be jealous, Ian. Actually, maybe it does."

"I am not jealous, and I'll have you know that women line up to get a piece of this."

He made a sweeping gesture to his entire person.

"And yet you chose that guy with the god-awful toupee."

Helen burst out laughing.

"Hey, that was for a mission… wait a second, how do you know about that?"

"Spy," John said in a tone of voice one would expect a "duhh" to be said.

"Well… stop!" Ian stuttered.

"Yeah, I don't think so. I've got to keep an eye on my baby brother, don't I?"

"I'm not a-"

"Boys." Helen cut them off, as it looked as though this might be heading into an all-out brawl.

"How about we just keep reading, okay?"

Reluctantly, they agreed.

"**I will have the sandwich sent in to you. But I must ask you please do not leave the room. There is, you understand, the security."**

"**Whatever you say, Mrs. Vole," Alex said.**

**The woman left. Alex opened one of the programs and for the next three hours lost himself in the state-of-the-art software of the Stormbreaker. Even when his sandwich arrived, he ignored it, letting it curl on the plate. He would never have said that schoolwork was fun, but he had to admit that the computer made it lively. The history program brought the battle of Port Stanley to life with music and video clips. How to extract oxygen from water? The science program did it in front of his eyes. The Stormbreaker even managed to make algebra almost bearable, which was more than Mr. Donovan at Brookland had ever done.**

**The next time Alex looked at his watch it was one o' clock. He had been in the room for over four**

**hours. He stretched and stood up. Nadia Vole had told him not to leave, **

"And so you're going to stay here and not anger the creepy lady-I agree."

**but if there were any secrets to be found in Sayle Enterprises, he wasn't going to find them here. He walked over to the door and was surprised to find that it opened as he approached. He went out into the corridor.**

**There was nobody in sight. Time to move.**

**Block A was administration and recreation. Alex passed a number of offices, then a blank, white-tiled cafeteria. There were about forty men and women, all in white coats and identity tags, sitting and talking animatedly over their lunches. He had chosen a good time. Nobody passed him as he continued through a Plexiglas walkway into Block B**

"Are you Lamaze breathing?" Ian had directed this question not at Helen but John.

He shrugged. "What? It actually really helps."

"Yeah, well, just let me know when the contractions start." Ian snorted.

**There were computer screens everywhere, glowing in cramped offices piled high with papers and printouts. Software development.**

**Through to Block C-research-past a library with endless shelves of books and CD ROMs Alex ducked behind a shelf as two technicians walked past, talking together. He was out-of-bounds, on his own, snooping around without any idea of what he was looking for. Trouble probably. **

Helen slapped John upside the head.

"Ow, what was that for?"

"He doesn't get the need to put himself into constant danger from me!"

**What else could there be to find?**

**He walked softly, casually down the corridor, heading for the last block. A murmur of voices reached him, and he quickly stepped into an alcove, squatting beside a drinking fountain as two men and a woman walked past, all wearing white coats, arguing about Web servers. Overhead, he noticed a security camera swiveling toward him. He made himself as small as he could, crouching down behind the fountain. The three technicians left the room. The security camera swung away again, and he darted forward keeping well clear of the wide-angle lens.**

**Had it seen him? Alex couldn't be sure, but he did know one thing. He was running out of time.**

That simple sentence could have an underlying meaning. It was giving John a very ominous feeling. He hoped it wasn't foreshadowing- maybe he was just overanalyzing.

**Maybe the Vole woman would have checked up on him already. Maybe someone would have brought lunch to the empty room. If he was going to find anything, it would have to be soon.**

**He started along the glass passage that joined Block C to Block D and here at last there was something different. The corridor was split in half with a metal staircase leading down into what must be some sort of basement. And although every building and every door he had seen so far had been labeled, this staircase was blank. The light stopped about halfway down. It was almost as if the stairs were trying not to get themselves noticed.**

**The clang of feet on metal. Alex backtracked to the first door he could find. Fortunately, it opened into a storage closet. He hid inside, watching through the rack as Mr. Grin appeared, rising out of the ground like a vampire on a bad day. As the sun hit his dead, white face his scars twitched and he blinked several times before walking off into Block D.**

**What had he been doing? Where did the stairs go?**

**Alex slipped off his shoes and, carrying them in his hand, hurried down. His feet made no sound on the metal steps. It was like stepping into a morgue. **

"Why would he know what a morgue is like?"

"I think it's just a phrase, I doubt Alex is some sort of necrophiliac."

"You never know, maybe since we're dead he has some strange obsession with corpses now. Oh my god, our son's got a dead person fetish and it's all our fault!"

John just rolled his eyes and Ian looked most perplexed as he attempted to follow Helen's train of thought.

"Now you're just being ridiculous," John said.

"Oh ridiculous, am I? Well you and Mr. Couch are going to become really great friends because my ridiculous self and I are banning from the bed. It's probably safer that way, we wouldn't want you to get contaminated." Came Helen's highly sarcastic reply.

**The air-conditioning was so strong that he could feel it on his forehead and on the palms of his hands, fast-freezing his sweat.**

**He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and put his shoes back on. He was in another long passageway, stretching back under the complex, the way he had come. It led to a single metal door. But there was something very strange. The walls of the passage were unfinished, dark brown rock with streaks of what looked zinc or some other metal. The floor was also rough and the way was lit by old-fashioned bulbs, hanging on wires. It all reminded him of something…something had very recently seen. But he couldn't remember what.**

**Somehow, Alex knew that the door at the end of the passage would be locked. It looked as if it had been locked forever.**

"Locked means 'do not enter'," Helen explained as though to a small child. "That means you should back away and not approach Alexander John Rider."

"Or it means that there's something interesting back there and you should try to pick the lock." Ian countered, curious.

Helen simply stared at him until he became uncomfortable enough to continue.

"But your safety always comes first so you should totally run back and hide."

**Like the stairs, it was unlabeled. And it seemed somehow too small to be important. But Mr. Grin had just come up the stairs. There was only one place he could have come from and that was the other side. The door had to go somewhere!**

**He reached it and tried the handle. **

Helen rolled her eyes, at this point resigned to the fact that her son's curiosity overrode any sense of self-preservation he may have.

**It wouldn't move. He pressed his ear against the metal and listened. Nothing. Unless…was he imagining it? A sort of throbbing… A pump or something like it.**

**Alex would have given anything to see through the metal. And suddenly he realized that he could-the Game Boy was in his pocket. So were the four cartridges. He took out the one called Exocet X, for X ray he reminded himself. Now, how did it work…? He flicked it on and held it flat against the door, the screen facing him.**

**To his amazement, the screen flickered into life: a tiny, almost opaque window through the metal door.**

"Now, that is awesome. Spies have it so easy in the future. When I-"

John cut Ian off midsentence. "Oh, shut up. Next you're going to be going off about how what things were like in 'your day'. You're not a senior citizen. Yet.

**Alex was looking into a large room. There was something tall and barrel shaped in the middle of it. And there were people. Ghostlike, mere smudges on the computer screen, they were moving back and forth. Some of them were carrying objects-flat and rectangular. Trays of some sort?**

**There seemed to be a desk to one side, piled with apparatus that he couldn't make out. Alex pressed the brightness control, trying to zoom in. But the room was too big. Everything was too far away.**

**But Smithers had also built an audio function into the machine. Alex fumbled in his pocket and took out the set of earphones. Still holding the Game Boy against the door, he pressed the wire into the socket and slipped the earphones over his head. If he couldn't see, at least he might be able to hear and, sure enough, the voices came through- faint and disconnected but audible through the powerful speaker system built into the machine place. "We have twenty-four hours."**

"Well, shit. There isn't a lot of time to figure out what's going on then," Ian remarked.

"Yes, thank you for that reminder," John said, jaw clenched. A lot could happen in twenty-four hours."

"**It's not enough."**

"**It's all we have. They come in tonight. At o' two hundred." Alex didn't recognize any of the voices. Amplified by the tiny machine, they sounded like a telephone call from abroad on a very bad line.**

"**Grin… overseeing…the delivery."**

"**It's still not enough time."**

**And then they were gone. Alex tried to piece together what he had heard. Something was being delivered. Two hours after midnight. Mr. Grin was arranging the delivery.**

**But what? Why?**

**He had just turned off the Game Boy and put it back into his pocket when he heard the scrunch of gravel behind him that told him he was no longer alone. He turned around and found himself facing Nadia Vole. **

"Oh my Jesus Christ," Helen gripped John's arm as though she was the one who had turned around to find a creepy German lady.

**Alex realized that she had tried to sneak up on him. She had known he was down here.**

"**What are you doing, Alex?" she asked. Her voice was poisoned honey.**

"**Nothing," Alex said.**

"That's always a solid alibi," Ian muttered.

"**I asked you to stay in your room."**

"**Yes. But I'd been there all day. I needed a break."**

"**And you came down here?"**

**"I saw the stairs. I thought they might lead to the toilet."**

**There was a long silence. Behind him, Alex could still hear-or feel-the throbbing from the secret room. Then the woman nodded as if she had decided to accept his story. "There is nothing down here," **

"Likely story," Helen accused.

**she said. "This door leads only to the generator room. Please," She gestured. "I will take you back to the main house and later you must prepare for dinner with Herr Sayle. He wishes to know your first impressions of the Stormbreaker."**

"That's not good. The more time he's around Sayle the more chance he has of being caught." John noted, feeling nerves begin claw at his stomach. The first time Alex spoke with Sayle he accidentally told him his real name. Alex was smart and resourceful but he was still a kid thrust into a very adult world. One with very permanent consequences.

**Alex walked past her and back up the stairs. He was certain of two things. The first was that Nadia Vole was lying. This was no generator room. She was hiding something from him and, perhaps, also from Herod Sayle. And she hadn't believed him either. One of the cameras must have spotted him, and she had been sent here to find him. So she knew that he was lying to her.**

**Not a good start.**

**Alex reached the staircase and climbed up into the light, feeling the woman's eyes, like daggers, stabbing into his back.**

Swallowing with difficulty, as her throat seemed to have seized in on itself, Helen shut the book and leaned against John, shutting her eyes briefly. She never thought that simply words would have the ability to exhaust her. She was torn between the need to find out what happens next and the desire to block her ears to keep away any more anxiety. John decided for her, suggesting that they all take a break for dinner and she gripped his hand as they all walked towards the kitchen, leaving the book closed on the floor as though that could keep it from hurting her.

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><p><strong>Well, make sure to leave comments-even if they're just berating me for the wait. Also, I would like to know if you guys would rather have me update shorter bits of chapters faster or wait until the whole chapter is finished. Your thoughts are always appreciated (unless they're asinine, jk, not really):)<strong>


	10. Chapter 10

**Whew, another chapter down. It only took three months (I'm sorry). Well, I did say around Thanksgiving so actually not bad. Anyway, I've been settling down at college and writing a shit ton of essays (yipee) which doesn't usually excite me to write more but I really wanted to update for you guys. I hope you like the chapter.**

**Special thanks to those who reviewed last chapter: Rebel99,Sunnilee Vale, Society Member,Monkey Writer jr, A Light in the Night,Cravedfictions, LegacyofBlood,CHiKa-RoXy, PlatinumOwl, Puberbeer, Maybelline98, CookieKickButt, ImClaraOswaldTheImpossibeGirl (thanks for putting this story in your community :)),zeynep sevim mete. **

**Also, a few people have mentioned adding more characters but I'm not really sure I want to. I like being able to focus more on the characters. However, if an overwhelming amount of you would like more people added I will reconsider.**

**Disclaimer: Oh, darling disclaimer how I have missed you. Just kidding. If you think I wrote Stormbreaker when I was five years old you need to be on some serious medication.**

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><p><strong>NIGHT VISITORS<strong>

**HEROD SAYLE WAS playing snooker when Alex was shown back into the room with the jellyfish. It was hard to say quite where the heavy, wooden snooker table had come from but Alex couldn't avoid the feeling that the little man looked slightly ridiculous, almost lost at the far end of the green baize. Mr. Grin was with him, carrying a footstool, which Sayle stood on for each shot.**

"**Ah…good evening, Felix. Or, of course, I mean Alex," Sayle exclaimed. "Do you play snooker?"**

"**Occasionally."**

**"How would you like to play against me?" He gestured at the table." There are only two red balls left then the colors. I'm sure you know the rules. The black ball is worth seven points, the pink six, and so on. But I'm willing to bet that you don't manage to score at all."**

"**How much?"**

"**Ha ha!" Sayle laughed. "Suppose I were to bet you ten pounds a ball?"**

"**As much as that?" Alex looked surprised.**

"**To a man like myself, ten pounds is nothing. Nothing! Why I could quite happily bet you a hundred pounds a point!"**

"**Then why don't you?" The words were softly spoken, but they were still a direct challenge.**

"_Alex, let's not challenge homicidal maniacs. They don't like it when they lose." John warned. _

"_How do you know he's going to win?" Ian proposed. _

"_Do I need to make some sort of video montague cataloguing all the times I've beaten you?"_

"_No. But you never know, he could take after Helen."_

"_Excuse me, but I don't believe you've ever even seen me play. I will kick your ass." Helen pointed at Ian in challenge._

"_Okay, geez. Maybe he takes after neither of you. Happy?"_

"_No." They answered simultaneously. _

"**A hundred pounds?" Sayle gazed thoughtfully at Alex. "But how will you pay me back if you lose?" Alex said nothing, and Sayle laughed. "You can work for me after you leave school," he said.**

"_How in the hell are you going to enforce that? It's not like you can make him sign a contract— he's underage." Helen scoffed._

"_What part of criminal are you not understanding? There are perfectly non-legal ways for him to ensure that." Ian retorted._

"**A hundred pounds a point if you get them in. A hundred hours working for me if you don't. What do you say?"**

**Alex nodded, feeling suddenly sick. Adding up the balls, he could see that there were twenty- four points left on the table. Two thousand four hundred hours working for Herod Sayle! That would take years.**

"**Very well." Sayle was still smiling. "I like a gamble. My father was a gambling man."**

**"I thought he was an oral hygienist."**

**"Who told you that?"**

**Silently, Alex cursed himself. Why wasn't he more careful when he was with this man? **

"_I don't usually associate the world careful with people who leap out a window on the fifteenth floor of a building." _

"**I read it in a paper," he said. "My dad got me some stuff to read** **about you when I won the competition."**

_It was just a simple lie; John told them constantly—it was part of the business. However, this lie, slipped so casually into conversation as though Alex had a dad that he could not only remember but was a constant in his life. A normal dad._

_Normalcy, however, was something that had long alluded the Riders. It was in these instances that he wished more than anything it was within his grasp._

"**Very well, let's get on with it." Sayle decided to take the first shot without asking Alex. He hit the cue ball, sending one of the reds straight into the middle pocket. "That's a hundred hours you owe me. I think I'll get you started cleaning the toilets." The jellyfish floated past as if watching the game from its tank. Mr. Grin picked up the footstool and moved it around the table. Sayle laughed briefly and followed the butler around, already sizing up the next shot, a fairly tricky black into the corner. Seven points if he got it in. Seven hundred hours more work. "So what does your father do?" Sayle asked.**

"_He will come back from the grave to make killing you as painfully as possible his full-time occupation if you so much as hurt a hair on his son's head. How does that sound?" John's voice was injected with a steely calm._

"_A little psychotic if you want to know the truth," Ian replied candidly. _

_He then received the full brunt of John's glare._

"_Yeah, that's not helping."_

**Alex quickly remembered what he had read about Felix Lester's family. "He's an architect," he said.**

"**Oh yes? What's he designed?" The question was casual, but Alex wondered if he was being tested.**

"_Well, let's hope he passes because I'm pretty sure failing this test won't be particularly good for his health," Ian supplied._

"_Yes, thanks for that, Mr. Sunshine." Helen responded in a tone that made it clear that comment was not welcomed._

"**He was working on an office in Soho," Alex said. "Before that he did an art gallery in Aberdeen."**

**"Yes." Sayle climbed onto the footstool and aimed. The black ball missed the corner pocket by a fraction of an inch, spinning back into the center. Sayle frowned. "That was your bliddy fault," he snapped at Mr. Grin.**

"_He wasn't the one who took a bad shot. Ever thought that maybe you just suck?" Helen asked as though Sayle could actually hear her._

"_Well, all things considering, no he probably hasn't. I'm pretty sure he thinks everyone should feel blessed by his existence," Ian answered._

"_Hm, sounds like someone I know,"she said mockingly, shooting John a pointed look._

"_Excuse me, it's not my fault that, in my case, it's true."_

"_Wow, as a lowly mortal I feel truly grateful to be married to such a god among humans."_

"_You should."_

**"Warg?"**

"**Your shadow was on the table. Never mind! Never mind!" He turned to Alex. "You've been unlucky. None of the balls will go in. You won't make any money this time."**

"_Just because they won't go in for you, doesn't mean it's impossible," Helen sniffed derisively._

**Alex pulled a cue out of the rack and glanced at the table. Sayle was right. The last red ball was too close to the cushion. But in snooker there are other ways to win points, as Alex knew only too well.**

**There was a snooker table in the basement of the Chelsea house and he'd often spent evenings playing against his uncle. **

"_He got lessons from the very best." Ian puffed out his chest._

_John snorted _

"_What?" Ian turned defensive. _

"_One time, you tried to hit the ball in and instead it flew off the table and made a whole in the wall. I didn't think it was possible."_

"_Just because you're jealous of my superior strength—"_

"_You do know I've been to the gym with you, right? You tried to bench press twice your weight and almost crushed your own windpipe."_

"_Now boys, let's stop fighting. Though, to be clear, I did not marry the scrawny Rider." Smirked_

"_Well, of course we know that Helen, our dad was already married. Unless your putting polygamy on the table, in which case, I'm pretty sure that's not legal."_

"_Oh, shut up. If you worked out the rest of your body as much as that mouth of yours, we wouldn't be having this conversation."_

"_Woah Helen, I don't swing that way."_

"_Unless he's got a toupee, right?" She replied snarkily, harkening back to John's earlier story._

"_That was one time! It was for a mission!" Ian protested._

"_Yeah, you keep saying that but I'm pretty sure I don't believe you," John chose this moment to bud in._

"_Yeah, well how about you believe the fist I'm about to put in your face," Ian held up his fist in a threatening manner._

"_This level of hostility is uncalled for," his brother's voice suggested he was shocked but his smirk told a differing story._

**This was something he hadn't mentioned to Sayle. He aimed carefully at the red, then hit. Perfect.**

"**Nowhere near!" Sayle was back at the table before the balls had even stopped rolling. But he had spoken too soon. He stared as the** **white ball hit the cushion and rolled behind the pink. He was trapped-snookered. It was impossible to hit the cue ball now without touching the pink. For about twenty seconds he measured up the angles, breathing through his nose. "You've had a bit of bliddy luck!" he said. "You seem to have accidentally snookered me.**

"_Accidentally, yeah that's it. I know this may come as a shock to you, but other people actually have brains. And use them for something other than just taking up space in their fat craniums," Helen huffed._

**Now, let me see." He concentrated, then hit the white, trying to curve it around. But once again he was out by less than half an inch. There was an audible click as it touched the pink.**

"**Foul shot," Alex said. "You touched the pink. According to the rules that's six points to me."**

"**What?"**

"**The foul is worth six points. I was down one point, so now I'm up five points. That's five hundred pounds you owe me.**

"**Yes! Yes! Yes!" Saliva flecked Sayle's lips. He was staring at the table as if he couldn't believe what had happened.**

**His shot had exposed the red ball. It was an easy shot into the top corner and Alex took it without hesitating. "And another hundred makes six hundred," he said. He moved down the table, brushing past Mr. Grin. Quickly, Alex judged the angles…Yes.**

**He got a perfect kiss on the black, sending it into the corner with the white spinning back for a good angle on the yellow. One thousand three hundred pounds, plus another two hundred when he dropped the yellow immediately afterward. Sayle could only watch in disbelief as Alex pocketed the green, the brown, the blue, and the pink, in that order, and then, down the full length of the table, the black.**

"**I make that four thousand pounds exactly," Alex said. He put down the cue. "Thank you very much."**

"_That's nice honey, but let's not piss him off. He may have a limited brain capacity but it doesn't take much intelligence to think: 'kill'," Helen advised to a son that could not hear her._

**Sayle's face had gone the color of the last ball.**

"**Four thousand…I wouldn't have gambled if I'd known you were this bliddy good," he said. He went over to the wall and pressed a button. Part of the floor slid back and the entire billiard table disappeared into it, carried down by a hydraulic lift.**

"_Someone's a poor loser. I mean, four thousand has got to be pocket change for him," Ian pointed out._

**When the floor slid back, there was no sign that it had ever been there. It was a neat trick. The toy of a man with money to burn. But Sayle was no longer in a mood for games. He threw his billiard cue over to Mr. Grin, hurling it almost like a javelin. The butler's hand flicked out and caught it. "Let's eat," Sayle said.**

**The two of them sat at opposite ends of a long glass table in the room next door while Mr. Grin served smoked salmon, then some sort of stew. Alex drank water. Sayle, who had cheered up once again, had a glass of expensive red wine.**

"**You spent some time with the Stormbreaker today?" he asked.**

**"Yes."**

**"And…"**

"**It's great," Alex said and meant it. He still found it hard to believe that this ridiculous man could have created anything so sleek and powerful.**

"_Ridiculous does not always equate to powerless. The fact that he has such a deceiving façade almost makes him more dangerous. You can't be sure what he's going to do next," John spoke with experience._

"_I would like to hazard a guess that it's something not good."_

"_Thank you for pointing out the obvious, Ian. It's nice to know that you're able to grasp these basic concepts. Who let__you be a spy, again?"_

"_Well, excuse me. We can't all be Mr. Perfect."_

_Helen's loud cough sounded suspiciously reminiscent of "inferiority complex."_

**"So what programs did you use?"**

**"History. Science. Math. It's hard to believe, but I actually enjoyed them."**

**"Do you have any criticisms?"**

**Alex thought for a moment. "I was surprised it didn't have three-D acceleration."**

"**It's not intended for games."**

"**Did you consider a headset and integrated microphone?"**

"**Of course." Sayle nodded. "They'll be available as accessories. I'm sorry you've only come here for such a short time, Alex. Tomorrow we'll have to get you onto the Internet. The Stormbreakers are all connected to a master network. That's controlled from here. **

"_That doesn't sound like a good thing."_

**It means they have twenty-four-hour free access."**

"**That's cool."**

**"It's more than cool." Sayle's eyes were far away, the gray pupils small, dancing. Tomorrow, we start shipping the computers out," he said. "They'll go by plane, by truck, and by boat. It will take just one day for them to reach every point of the country. And the day after, at twelve o' clock noon exactly, the prime minister honors me by pressing the start button that will bring every one of my** **Stormbreakers on-line. At that moment, all the schools will be united! "Think of it, Alex! Thousands of schoolchildren-hundreds of thousands-sitting in front of the screens, suddenly together. North,**

**south, east, and west. One school. One family. And then they will know me for what I am!"**

"_Well, that sounds rather ominous. I, for one, would not care to know him better. You know, considering he's a bit of a nutter," Ian followed Helen's example of responding to, well, pretty much everything with sarcasm._

He picked up his glass and emptied it. "How is the goat?" he asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"The stew. The meat is goat. It was a recipe of my mother's."

"She must have been an unusual woman."

"_I would say you probably shouldn't go around describing people's mothers as "unusual" but all things considered, go for it, honey."_

"_He's just unaware of how hypocritical that is," Ian smiled patronizingly at his sister-in-law._

"_Oh, shut up. If I'm unusual than you're a freaking alien. And not one of the cool ones with a tardis."_

**Herod Sayle held out his glass and Mr. Grin refilled it. He was gazing at Alex curiously. "You know," he said. "I have a strange feeling that you and I have met before."**

"_Shit." John did not seem keen to explain this expletive and so Ian felt the need to prompt him._

"_What?"_

"_Think about it. If Alex takes after me, and neither of you wore a disguise around Sayle…"_

"_He'll recognize Alex."_

_Ian's emotions at this moment seemed to be warring with one another. On one hand, the idea that his nephew looked so alike him made him happy in that no one could doubt their intangible connection. However, if it was going to endanger him, he would almost rather have Alex favor Helen._

"**I don't think so."**

"**But, yes. Your face is familiar to me. Mr. Grin? What do you think?"**

**The butler stood back with the wine. His dead white wad twisted around to look at Alex. "Eeeg."**

"**Raargh!" he said.**

"**Yes, of course. You're right!"**

"**Eeeg Raargh?" Alex asked.**

"**Ian Rider. The security man I mentioned. You look lot like him. Quite a coincidence, don't you think?"**

"_Yeah, if he actually thinks that's a coincidence, I'm the Queen," Helen commented in her usually sarcastic tone._

"_Wait, you're not? Then why have I been calling you Your Worship?" Ian questioned._

"_Because you saw Star Wars and decided to be a little shit."_

"_Oh, yeah. Now I remember."_

**"I don't know. I never met him." **

"_Now Alex, I know we all wish that but that's still a very rude thing to say about your uncle."_

"_Wow, I see how it is. It's okay, Helen. I know I'm the best thing in your life. You don't have to pretend."_

"_Sometimes, I like to pretend John's an only child. Just kidding. I__like to pretend that all the time."_

"_You've wounded me."_

"_Wow, it's like you know all of my fantasies."_

_Ian looked perversely gratified that she even bothered to wish for his nonexistence. _

Alex could feel the danger getting closer. "You told me he left suddenly."

"**Yes. He was sent here to keep an eye on things, but if you ask me he was never any bliddy good. Spent half his time in the village. In the port, the post office, the library. When he wasn't snooping around here that is. Of course, that's something else you have in common. I understand Fraulein Vole found you today." Sayle's pupils crawled to the front of his eyes trying to get closer to Alex.**

"**You were off limits."**

"**I got a bit lost." Alex shrugged, trying to make light of it.**

"**Well, I hope you don't go wandering again tonight. Security is very tight at the moment and, as you may have noticed, my men are all armed."**

"_Um, I'm rather new to all this but that sounded a lot like a threat to me."_

"**I didn't think that was legal in England."**

"**We have a special license. At any rate, Alex, I would advise you to go straight to your room after dinner. And stay there. I would be inconsolable if you were accidentally shot and killed in the darkness.**

"_Yeah, no. That was definitely a threat." Helen's nails were digging painfully into John's arm but he made no attempt to remove her hand. He fully understood her anxiety._

**Although, of course, it would save me four thousand pounds."**

"**Actually, I think you've forgotten the check."**

"_How about we don't remind him of more reasons to kill you. Yeah? Great."_

"**You'll have it tomorrow. Maybe we can have lunch together. Mr. Grin will be serving up one of my grandmother's recipes."**

"**More goat?"**

"**Dog."**

"**You obviously had a family that loved animals."**

_Helen released a surprised bought of laughter._

"**Only the edible ones." Sayle smiled. "And now I must wish you good night."**

**At one-thirty in the morning Alex's eyes blinked open, and he was instantly awake.**

**He slipped out of bed and dressed quickly in his darkest clothes, then left the room.**

_Helen naturally responded to this by hitting John repeatedly._

"_Ow, what was that for?"_

"_My hearing is great, so his missing of the fact that Sayle threatened to have him shot must be inherited from you!"_

**He was half surprised that the door was open and that the corridors seemed to be unmonitored. But this was, after all, Sayle's private house and any security would have been designed to stop people coming in, not leaving.**

**Sayle had warned him not to leave the house.**

"_See, he heard it," John pointed out, as though he was now__absolved of all guilt._

"_Yeah, but considering he's ignoring that warning it doesn't make much difference, does it?"_

**But the voices behind the metal door had spoken of something arriving at two o' clock, Alex had to know what it was. What could be such a big secret that it had to arrive in the middle of the night?**

**He found his way into the kitchen and tiptoed past a stretch of gleaming silver surfaces and an oversize fridge. Let sleeping dogs lie he thought to himself, remembering the dinner. There was a side-door, fortunately with the key still in the lock. Alex turned it and let himself out. As a last minute precaution, he locked the door and kept the key. Now at least he had a way back in.**

**It was a soft, gray night with a half-moon forming a perfect D in the sky. D for what, Alex wondered. Danger? Discovery? Or disaster? Only time would tell.**

"_I'm going to use the keen insight of my inner eye to say that all three are in his future," Ian stated loftily, gesturing as__though speaking to a large audience. The unwilling recipients of this keen observation did not look amused. Helen, in fact, took this opportunity to wack him upside the head. _

"_Geez, sensitive much?" Ian grumbled as he rubbed the affected area. He made sure to say this quietly enough that Helen did not hear, though from the warning look John sent him made it clear he had been overheard._

**He took two steps forward then froze as a searchlight directed from a tower he hadn't even seen rolled past inches away. At the same time he became aware of voices, and two guards walked slowly across the garden, patrolling the back of the house. They were both armed and Alex remembered what Sayle had said. An accidental shooting would save him four thousand pounds. And given the importance of the Stormbreakers, would anyone care just how accidental the shooting might have been? **

_This reverie did not appear to be good for Helen's blood pressure._

**He waited until the men had gone, then took the opposite direction running along the side of the house, crouching low under the** **windows. He reached the corner and looked around. In the distance the airstrip was fit-up and there were figures, more guards and technicians everywhere. One man he recognized walking past the fountain, toward a truck parked next to a couple of cars.**

**He was tall and gangly, silhouetted against the lights, a black cutout. But Alex would have known Mr Grin anywhere. "They come in tonight. At o' two hundred." Night visitors. And Mr. Grin was on his**

**way to meet them.**

"_I'm sure their just going to have a nice two-in-the-morning-tea party. Nothing to see Alex, time to go back to bed," Helen made shooing motions with her hands as though Alex were actually in the room._

"_Tea party?" Ian questioned._

"_What? I think that sounds perfectly reasonable."_

"_Why, do you usually have tea parties at two in the morning?"_

"_More importantly, do you usually take a gun to these tea parties?" John asked._

"_Yes, you never know when you're going to need to protect yourself. People tend to get angry if you forget to bring the sugar to early morning tea parties."_

_The brothers seemed at lack of a response to this._

**The butler had almost reached the truck and Alex knew that if he waited any longer he would be too late. Throwing **_caution to the wind, _

"_Oh yeah, fuck caution. I mean, it only keeps you alive but what do I know?" Helen threw up her hands in exasperation and John seemed slightly relieved that she was not instead using them to slap him as though Alex's recklessness was entirely his fault._

**he left the cover of the house and ran out into the open, trying to stay low and hoping his dark clothes would keep him invisible. He was only fifty yards from the truck when Mr. Grin suddenly stopped and turned around as if he had sensed there was someone there. There was nowhere for Alex to hide. He did the only thing he could and threw himself flat on the ground, burying his face in the grass. He counted slowly to five then looked up. Mr. Grin was turning once again. A second figure had appeared. Nadia Vole. **

"_This keeps getting better and better." Ian muttered._

**It seemed she would be driving. She muttered something as she climbed into the front. Mr. Grin grunted and nodded.**

**By the time Mr. Grin had walked around to the passenger door, Alex was once again up and running. He reached the back of the truck just as it began to move. It was similar to the trucks that he had seen at the SAS camp it could have been army-surplus. The back was tall and square, with a tarpaulin hanging loose to conceal whatever might be inside. Alex clambered onto the moving tail-gate and threw himself in. The truck was empty and he was only just in time. Even as he hit the floor, one of the cars started up behind him, flooding the back of the truck with its headlights. If he had waited even a few seconds more, he would have been seen. In all, a convoy of five vehicles left Sayle Enterprises. The truck Alex was in was the last but one. In addition to Mr. Grin and Nadia Vole, at least a dozen** **uniformed guards were making the journey. But where to?**

"_Wouldn't we all like to know?" Ian agreed._

"_No, I really could not care less." Helen dissented._

"_Oh come on, I know you're curious."_

"_Not enough to have my son die for this." Helen replied stubbornly._

_Ian did not press the issue._

**Alex didn't dare look out the back, not with a car right behind him. He felt the truck slow down as they reached the main gate, and then they were out on the main road driving rapidly uphill away, from the village.**

**Alex felt the journey without seeing it. He was lying on a wooden floor, about ten feet across, with nothing to hold on to as the truck sped around hairpin bends. The walls of the truck were steel and windowless. He only knew they had left the main road when he suddenly found himself being bounced up and down, and he was grateful that the truck was now moving more slowly. He sensed they were going downhill, following a rough track. And now he could hear** **something, even over the noise of the engine. Waves. They had come down to the sea.**

"_Brilliant deduction, Sherlock."_

**The truck stopped. There was the opening and slamming of car doors, the scrunch of boots on rocks, low voices talking. Alex crouched down, afraid that one of the guards would throw back the tarpaulin and discover him, but the voices faded and he found himself alone. Cautiously, he slipped out the back. He was right. The convoy had parked on a deserted beach. Looking around, he could see a track leading down from the road that twisted up over the cliffs**

**that surrounded them. Mr. Grin and the others had gathered beside an old stone jetty that stretched out into the black water. He was carrying a flashlight, Alex saw him swing it in an arc. Growing ever more curious, he crept forward and found a hiding place behind a clump of boulders. It seemed that they were waiting for a boat. He looked at his watch. It was exactly two o' clock. He almost wanted** **to laugh.**

"_Yeah, because risking your life is just hilarious." There was a slight tremor in Helen's sarcastic tone that caused John to reach over and stroke her arm reassuringly._

**Give the men flintlock pistols and horses and they could have come straight out of a children's book. Smuggling on the Cornish coast. Could that be what this was all about? Cocaine or marijuana coming in from the Continent? Why else come here in the middle of the night?**

**The question was answered a few seconds later. Alex stared, unable to quite believe what he was seeing. A submarine. It had emerged from the sea with the speed and the impossibility of a huge stage illusion. One moment there was nothing, and then it was there in front of him, plowing through the sea toward the jetty, its engine making no sound water streaking off its silver casing and churning**

**white behind it. The submarine had no markings, but Alex knew it wasn't English. The shape of the diving plane slashing horizontally through the conning tower and the shark's tail rudder at the back was like nothing he had ever seen. He wondered if it was nuclear powered. A conventional engine would surely have made more noise.**

**And what was it doing here off the coast of Cornwall? Not for the first time, Alex felt very small, and very young. **

_At this admittance John felt a painful nauseusness arise in his stomach. He was too young to carry this kind of weight. Fathers were supposed to protect their children from experiencing these burdens. For all that he would and had sacrificed for Queen and country, his son had never been on that all his supposed strength, Alex would have been safer had his father actually been an architect._

_None of this was visible upon his face._

**Whatever was going on here he knew he was way out of his depth. And then the tower opened, and a man climbed out stretching himself in the cold morning air. Even without the half-moon, Alex would have recognized the sleek dancer's body and the close cropped hair of the man whose photograph he had seen only a few days before. It was Yassen Gregorovich. Alex stared at him with growing fear. This was the contract killer Mrs. Jones had told him about.**

**The man who had murdered Ian Rider.**

_The boy, it was hard for John to think of him as anything else, that John had helped train. _

**He was dressed in gray overalls and sneakers. He was smiling. He was the last person Alex wanted to meet.**

"_Good, let's stay away from contract killers, Alex."_

**At the same time he forced himself to stay where he was. He had to work this out. Yassen Gregorovich had supposedly met Sayle in Cuba. Now here he was in Cornwall. So the two of them were working together. But why? Why should the Stormbreaker project possibly need a man like him?**

"_I'm going to assume it's not for tech support."_

**Nadia Vole walked to the end of the jetty and Yassen climbed down to join her. They spoke for a few minutes but, even assuming they had chosen the English language, there was no chance of their being overheard. Meanwhile, the guards from Sayle Enterprises had formed a line stretching back almost to the point where the vehicles were parked. Yassen gave an order and, as Alex watched from behind the rocks, a metallic silver box with a vacuum seal appeared held by unseen hands at the top of the submarine's tower. Yassen himself** **passed it down to the first of the guards, who then passed it back up the line. About forty more boxes followed, one after another. It took almost an hour to unload the submarine. The men handled the boxes carefully. They obviously didn't want to break whatever was inside.**

"_That means it's either not good or very expensive," Ian thought aloud._

"_Most likely it's both."_

**By the end of the hour they were almost finished. The boxes were being repacked now into the back of the truck that Alex had vacated. And that was when it happened. One of the men standing on the jetty dropped one of the boxes. He managed to catch it again at the last minute, but even so it banged down heavily on the stone surface. Everyone stopped. Instantly. It was as if a switch had been thrown and Alex could almost feel the raw fear in the air.**

"_What are they transporting? Explosives?" Helen asked incredulously._

_John thought it best not to bring up that explosives were a strong possibility._

**Yassen was the first to recover. He darted forward along the jetty, moving like a cat, his feet making no sound. He reached the box and ran his hands over it, checking the seal, then nodded slowly. The metal wasn't even dented. With everyone so still, Alex heard the exchange that followed.**

"**I'm sorry," the guard said. "I won't do that again."**

"**No. You won't." Yassen agreed and shot him.**

_John suppressed a wince, attempting not to picture the young man so desperate to prove that he could be a killer. He'd come a long way from being unable to assassinate a woman because, as he'd claimed, she'd spoken to him._

**The bullet spat out of his hand, red in the darkness. It hit the man in the chest, propelling him backward in an awkward cartwheel. The man fell into the sea. For a few seconds he looked up at the moon as if trying to admire it one last time. Then the black water folded over him.**

_Helen knew that Ian and John had both seen enough people die for a lifetime, even she herself as a nurse had close dealings with death. It was, however, not something she would wish for her son. Death seemed to surround him, though. It had met Alex at age one, with the death of his parents, and apparently seemed intent to stay close by. Helen and John had introduced them and, in that way, it was their fault. _

**It took them another twenty minutes to finish loading the truck. Yassen got into the front seat with Nadia Vole. This time, Mr. Grin went in one of the cars. Alex had to time his return carefully. As the truck picked up speed, rumbling back up toward the road, he left the cover of the rocks, ran forward and pulled him self in. There was hardly any room with all the boxes, but he managed to find a hole and squeezed himself into it. He ran a hand over one of the boxes. It was about the size of a toaster oven, unmarked and cold to the touch. Close up, it looked like the sort of thing you might take on a high-tech picnic. He tried to find a way to open it, but it was locked in a way he didn't understand. He looked back out of the truck. The beach and the jetty were already far below them. The submarine was pulling out to sea. One moment it was there, sleek and silver, gliding through thewater. The next it had sunk below the surface, disappearing as quickly as a bad dream.**

_To the three readers of Alex's story, this was worse than a bad dream in that it would not disappear—it was a dark reality._

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><p><strong>Well, thanks for sticking with this story to its tenth chapter! Let me know what you thought. Also, if you have a tumblr, feel free to find me and bug me about updates or, you know, just talk about AR with me. My url is percyischaoswalking.<strong>


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